LOL at the uptick in followers.

Fair Warning: I believe that Cultural American Patriotic Churchianity (CAPC for short - aka White Evangelicalism/Christian Nationalism) has caused more damage to the body of Christ and the credibility of the church than CRT ever has or will.

Remember: Just because an idea is old doesn't mean it's good.

Knowing whether old ideas are more likely to be good requires understanding whether conditions have changed in important ways.

Horse archery was an amazing method of warfare for over a thousand years...then people invented guns, and suddenly this great idea that had stood the test of time became obsolete.

Then again, when underlying conditions don't change much, tried-and-true approaches are probably better.

"Learning the lessons of history" usually just means assuming ergodicity and stationarity in an informal time-series model...

(end)

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/

Our pretensions to civilization have become very thin. Political violence was legitimized last year and is spreading wildly now. "Might makes right" is clearly the only "principle" behind freedom of speech. That's why Chinese Communists will never be censored by Big Tech.

When every "principle" becomes nothing but a ruthless exercise of power, it's not surprising that a growing number of people conclude they must demonstrate some sort of power in order to be taken seriously. Violence is the crudest exercise of power.

A well-run civilization makes it clear *universally* that violence is absolutely unacceptable. Giving free passes for irresponsible rhetoric and destruction to groups favored by the dominant political ideology of the State undermines that message.

We must also people peaceable means of expressing themselves and controlling their own lives, to relieve the pressures that can lead to violent outbursts and other forms of lawlessness. The less healthy discourse and freedom of action you have, the more pressure builds up.

It's dangerous when large numbers of people begin drawing the conclusion that might makes right, that laws and principles bend easily for those who have the political strength to bend them. Might makes right is the code of anarchy and barbarism, the antithesis of civilization.

THREAD: Almost a year into the launch of Aarogya Setu, there is still little to no public data on its benefits. Yet, many of its flaws are well documented. Now it's going to be used for vaccine rollouts despite meager progress in public

Experts have been warning us about Aarogya Setu's capacity for surveillance. Post integration with COWIN, it will likely become a permanent part of our health data landscape. We've written to the NIC with key concerns, because here's what we've learnt in 1 year:
2/n

To justify violation of privacy, necessity and proportionality have to be proven. Aarogya Setu has disregarded these principles - we know because we analysed its Data Protocol, which MeitY released after public pressure. It fails to satisfy the basic threshold of legality.
3/n

A lack of transparency has pervaded the ecosystem. RTIs on Aarogya Setu failed to receive adequate answers. In fact, we had to send a legal notice because CIC refused to let RTI activist Saurav Das attend his own show cause hearing regarding critical info about Aarogya Setu.
4/n

Issues have been raised about the non open-source nature of the app. Even when the source code was released, it was the code for an earlier version of the app that was made available. The server-side code of the app was not available at all.
5/n