1) FALL OF THE CABAL - THE UGLY TRUTHS

10 part documentary (25 tweets)

A documentary expose̒ of the ugly truths about our world and the people who run it. The narrator includes a lot of information in 10 relatively short episodes. Mind-blowing information ! Award winning

1/OK, I should really write another thread about university-centric regional development, because I think people often make some (very understandable) mistakes when thinking about this issue.

2/The biggest myth, I think, is that universities help regions by educating locals as undergraduates.

Skeptics of universities say: "But most of the people who graduate end up leaving."

3/In fact, most of what a university does for a regional economy is NOT about educating local kids.

Educating local kids is good for the nation, but doesn't help a region much.

The way a university helps a region is through

4/Undergraduates usually leave town after graduation.

But university RESEARCH pulls in OTHER smart people from other regions, and they stay there.

Here's a paper showing that this is the main way universities increase a region's human capital:

5/Research also pulls in business investment.

Companies want to partner with university labs, so they can commercialize the technologies the labs produce. So they invest in the labs, and sometimes they even put their offices in the town.

I've been wanting to write this thread for a while. It has been inspired by hearing a common thought: why can't people just "listen"? If people just followed the rules, we wouldn't be in this mess. I think this is oversimplification of the problem with COVID: 1/

It is true, there are people who haven't been following guidelines (by definition that happened a LOT at Christmas/NYE in my region), but even before, we know transmission in private gatherings happens. 2/

These private gatherings are pictured to be big raucous parties, but in reality, even before lockdown, this is just people having dinner, watching TV, doing things we did before on a daily basis. These little ripples when added across the country make a big wave.. 3/

...and little can be done about this apart from positive messaging. You can't very well have police patrolling neighbourhoods across the country. 4/

Next thing is we keep hearing over and over and over, stay home. There are diminishing returns with this advice, but also, most people who can stay home ARE. So what's the issue? There are a HUGE # of people who can't stay home because they work in essential jobs 5/

I'm teaching a class on race and after reading bell hooks we've moved on to @JohnHMcWhorter. Fact: liberals/progressives generally will never critique the poor moral choices of disadvantaged blacks and tend to blame black morality on "white racism." https://t.co/GEvSKupDox via

Meanwhile conservatives, generally, struggle to confess that Jim Crow was a (Christian) conservative movement. This is why we can't make any progress in 2020. The idea that black people *and* white people *both* have zero moral culpability on our past or present is fiction.

It's not "racist" for a white male to say black men in urban areas commit more crimes in their own neighborhoods and, therefore, are more likely to have contact with police. And it's false that men who commit violent crime & property crime are only doing so because of poverty.

Yes, evangelical Christians, in Jesus name, supported and defended Jim Crow, resisted integration, and struggle with white nationalism as an idol in 2020. Absolutely! Many of their pastors are cowards for never addressing or aiding and abetting it.

Yes, there are cultural patterns in disadvantaged black communities that are not derivative of white racism but emerge from the fact that black men & women, just like white men & women, chose, on purpose, actions that lack virtue & wisdom. Why? B/c all humans are morally flawed.