A Black couple put in $400k in home renovations, but their home appraisal barely budged.

When a white friend posed as the homeowner for a new appraisal, the home appraisal went up by $500k!

This is outrageous but unsurprising. Let me explain. /1/

Home ownership is *the* single biggest wealth generator for most families. It builds your retirement nest eggs, allows a family to pass on generational wealth, and you can borrow against a home to pay for big expenses, e.g., children’s college education. /2/
Yet, home ownership is out of reach for many Black people for many reasons. First, discrimination in lending makes it difficult for Black borrowers to obtain a mortgage. Black borrowers are denied mortgages at DOUBLE the rate as white borrowers. /3/ https://t.co/3ybvwGTiXH
Second, less generational wealth for Black borrowers means they don’t get help from parents and grandparents who can you pay the outrageous down payment that most borrowers need to secure a mortgage. /4/
Finally, Black borrowers on average owe about DOUBLE the amount in student loan debt than white borrowers, and owe more than when they started college(!), which means the dream of home ownership is delayed if not denied. /5/ https://t.co/VDVA3ALIlx
What are the solutions to fix this huge problem. Black and Brown people are woefully underrepresented in consumer financial and housing regulatory bodies that are responsible for policing these industries. /6/
We need Black/Brown people in positions of power in these industries in order to bring their unique experience to bear. And cancel student loan debt which would begin to close to racial wealth gap and spur the economy to allow Black borrowers the ability to buy a home. /7/
And we need to focus more attention on systemic inequalities in our banking and lending systems (e.g., discrimination in lending, aka redlining). /8/
Finally, it is worth noting that a fairer system benefits all of us. More home ownership means more people investing in their neighborhood and spur the economy. We need to tackle discrimination in home ownership NOW. /end/

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In the spring and summer of 2016, as reported by the Times, activity we traced to GRU was reported to the FBI. This was the standard model of interaction companies used for nation-state attacks against likely US targeted.

In the Spring of 2017, after a deep dive into the Fake News phenomena, the security team wanted to publish an update that covered what we had learned. At this point, we didn’t have any advertising content or the big IRA cluster, but we did know about the GRU model.

This report when through dozens of edits as different equities were represented. I did not have any meetings with Sheryl on the paper, but I can’t speak to whether she was in the loop with my higher-ups.

In the end, the difficult question of attribution was settled by us pointing to the DNI report instead of saying Russia or GRU directly. In my pre-briefs with members of Congress, I made it clear that we believed this action was GRU.
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Viruses and other pathogens are often studied as stand-alone entities, despite that, in nature, they mostly live in multispecies associations called biofilms—both externally and within the host.

https://t.co/FBfXhUrH5d


Microorganisms in biofilms are enclosed by an extracellular matrix that confers protection and improves survival. Previous studies have shown that viruses can secondarily colonize preexisting biofilms, and viral biofilms have also been described.


...we raise the perspective that CoVs can persistently infect bats due to their association with biofilm structures. This phenomenon potentially provides an optimal environment for nonpathogenic & well-adapted viruses to interact with the host, as well as for viral recombination.


Biofilms can also enhance virion viability in extracellular environments, such as on fomites and in aquatic sediments, allowing viral persistence and dissemination.