BC SOCIETY
Saved by @Alex1Powell

THREAD: Today, @courierjournal published Beyond Breonna, a series on systemic racism and how Louisville can end it.

It was spurred by the death of Breonna Taylor. But these issues have existed for generations. People are tired of the same

 As @FBruceWilliams said: "It kills me when people ask, 'Well, what do you want?' ... Why is it so difficult for people to believe (a Black community) wants for its residents the same opportunities, services, convenience and quality in their neighborhood?"

https://t.co/Rv9XUGHv49
The series covers disparities in health, education, housing, employment and criminal justice.

We start with health because Black people are dying younger in Louisville - from homicides, chronic illnesses and now the coronavirus.

https://t.co/BGf0SpMrt8
Environmental conditions - such as access to healthy food, quality housing and clean air - contribute to higher rates of illness in Black communities.

And disparities in treatment have made Black patients mistrust the system.

https://t.co/BGf0SpMrt8
Alisha Beatty had 7 miscarriages before she said doctors took her seriously and looked into the cause.

"I was always told, 'It's an act of God, these things happen.'"

https://t.co/BGf0SpMrt8
We move on to education because it's supposed to be the "great equalizer."

In Louisville, it still isn't, @HayesGardner reported.

https://t.co/JhaWtE6V8n
“Everything we do — our policies, our procedures, everything — has to have a focus on racial equity because we're seeing the same achievement gaps nationwide that aren't changing." @JCPSSuper

https://t.co/JhaWtE6V8n
Education can lead to better jobs which can lead to better housing and opportunities.

In Louisville, just 36% of Black households own their home, while 70% of white households do.

https://t.co/BQ8RNJgqGh
Instead of improving, disparities in housing are getting worse.

Black home-ownership rates fell between 2000 and 2017. And Black people are still evicted at higher rates than white people - including Kwmisha Adams, a mother of four.

https://t.co/BQ8RNJgqGh
Kwmisha Adams was evicted from her apartment in August amid the coronavirus pandemic.

"What hurts me the most, it's not me that I have to think about, it's four kids. ... I'm already living in government assistance. How much lower can a person feel?"

https://t.co/BQ8RNJgqGh
Then we get to the criminal justice story.

This one is hard.

Kris Smith, who @HayesGardner featured, was shot and killed Friday as this series was awaiting publication.

https://t.co/qvIJO2OaIj
Kris Smith was called a hero for stopping a deadly situation.

But he sat in jail for multiple years awaiting two trials on felony gun possession, eventually taking a plea.

“You get so tired of being in there, locked up, you’ll take damn near anything."

https://t.co/qvIJO2OaIj
In Kentucky, Black people are nearly 3 times more likely to be in jail than white people. And from 2017 through October 2020, Black people made up 43.5% of arrests by the LMPD, though they make up 22% of the city's population.

https://t.co/qvIJO2OaIj
Criminal records limit a person's job opportunities.

But as @HayesGardner shows with the story of William Isaac, the lack of opportunities sometimes leads people to commit crimes.

https://t.co/Q8MctcY2EI
In Louisville, 18% of Black people with a high school degree are unemployed, compared to 6% of white people.

“If you don’t have any hope, and you’re discouraged, then, I don’t know. You’re just gonna do things that you shouldn’t do," Isaac said.

https://t.co/Q8MctcY2EI
Unequal access to high-paying jobs and home-ownership prevents Black people from establishing wealth, which in turn can prevent them from taking financial risks - such as opening a business.

In 2020, 2.4% of Louisville businesses are Black-owned.

https://t.co/S3tpBVNt20
"Black people can be very creative and innovative with ideas and skills and abilities, but don’t have the capital to venture with, and if they do, it’s going to be more to sustain livelihood than to be a risk-taker and try a business venture." @kefieldssr

https://t.co/S3tpBVNt20
As you read these stories, notice the themes.

The coronavirus is deepening disparities, giving these issues even more urgency.

But Louisville isn't naive about how to solve them. People know what needs to be done.

The question is: Do we have the will?

https://t.co/oRs5f6IBPJ
.@HiJackTheDay told me about research he did in 2015 following the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson.

People wanted to know how Louisville could prevent something similar from happening here.

5 years later, little has changed.

https://t.co/oRs5f6IBPJ
A common reason from those in power is that they don't have the resources to try solutions toward ending systemic racism.

But community members say, in many cases, the obstacle isn't funding — it's a matter of priority and personal will.

https://t.co/oRs5f6IBPJ
"If you’re white, you don’t need to tell a Black person change is slow. Because we see from our lived experience, when white people facilitate changes on their behalf, the shit can change pretty rapidly." @HiJackTheDay

https://t.co/oRs5f6IBPJ
Want proof that Louisville knows how to reduce racial disparities?

Here are 50 potential solutions.

https://t.co/ND4jJI1Wb8
And if you want to get involved yourself, here are dozens of places already doing great work.

https://t.co/o10nF81t4c
This series is for subscribers, and we'd really appreciate if you support it through a subscription.

But the paywall will lift in two days. So if you can't afford it right now, bookmark this thread for Wednesday.

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Brianne Kimmel \U0001f4ac
Brianne Kimmel 💬...
@briannekimmel
Shocking fact: Millennial men are less likely to work than any other age and gender demographic in America.

Today, there are 500,000 young men missing from the U.S. workforce.

Research suggests video games & improved leisure tech plays a role in the problem. 👇 Thread:

Following the 2007 to 2009 recession, 25 to 34 year old men exited high school with fewer middle-skill job opportunities than years prior.

During this time, we saw an increased number of men living with parents & choosing unemployment over lower paying jobs.

It's estimated that 24M millennials live w/ their parents.

1 in 4 living in their parents’ home neither go to school nor work.

What's more surprising? 9 in 10 who lived with their parents a year ago are still living there w/ no plans to leave.

Economists are calling millennial men a lost generation.

According to economist David Dorn:

“If you get to the point where you’re turning 30, you’ve never held a real job and you don’t have a college education, then it is very hard to recover at that point.”

Economists suggest this choosiness is a generational trait.

Forbes interview w/ a high school educated man:

"I’m very quick to get frustrated when people refuse to pay me what I’m worth."
“People feel that they have choice nowadays, and they
SOCIETY
Dr. Simon \u30c4
Dr. Simon ツ
@goddeketal
1/ One year of destroyed economies, social isolation & deep social splits calls for an anniversary ⬇️thread ⬇️ to celebrate the RT-qPCR manuscript by Christian Drosten (@c_drosten) & Victor Corman (@vmcorman), submitted on 21st Jan 2020 to @Eurosurveillanc. #UnbiasedScience


2/ Before this very publication, virologists were neither treated like superstars, nor were they considered icons or half-gods. In 2009, Drosten almost succeeded in installing the false premise virology could supersede holistic medical sciences as discussed in this thread.

3/ Drosten is a virologist. He neither has any background in epidemiology, nor has he ever worked in the civil service. He also doesn’t have a background in public health. Yet he and his colleagues affect our daily lives to the level of whom to meet up or how to flush the toilet.


4/ Before January 2020, Drosten and Corman were common virologists at Charité Berlin, whenever they were not involved in economic implications (https://t.co/UTDwG8U7Du). Other than that, they looked at coronaviruses in dromedary calves in the Middle East or Africa. 😍 #cute


5/ Finally in Jan 2020, the published paper laid the theoretical grounds for the current pandemic, the RT-qPCR mass testing-religion, for which he was awarded his second German Federal Cross of Merit (he received the first one in 2005 for developing the SARS-CoV PCR test).
SOCIETY
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kurt lash
kurt lash
@kurtlash1
1/ The “I Have a Dream" speech is one of the most extraordinary speeches in American history. You should read it again. First, a few thoughts about the common American heritage Dr. King relied upon in calling Americans to rededicate themselves to the unfinished work of freedom.


2/ Dr. King delivered his speech in what he called the “hallowed spot” of the Lincoln memorial. More than a picturesque backdrop, King relied on America’s reverence for Lincoln and the common celebration of Lincoln’s words and acts, especially the Emancipation Proclamation.


3/ “Five score years ago…” King echoes the words of the Gettysburg Address. Like Lincoln, King invokes the Declaration of Independence and the fundamental principles of American freedom, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Every person in that crowd knew these words.


4/ The Declaration, Constitution and Emancipation Proclamation declared and established the fundamental American principles of freedom that all Americans knew and believed in. But these principles and promises remained unfulfilled for black Americans.


5/ Lincoln’s audience knew the history of slavery and many had suffered personal loss in the ongoing war. Dr. King’s audience knew the history of violent racism, segregation, and unequal economic opportunity. The Proclamation freed the slaves, “but the Negro still is not free.”
HISTORY , SOCIETY
Marshall Steinbaum \U0001f525
Marshall Steinbaum 🔥...
@Econ_Marshall
My wonderful @jainfamilyinst colleagues @laura_bmw & @Edi_Nilaj have released their new report "Student Debt and Young America," which pretty comprehensively demolishes many of the myths about who does and doesn't have student debt.
https://t.co/y02KFosRQ3
Highlights to follow
/1

@laura_bmw @Edi_Nilaj First of all, look at this one chart that tells you why the student debt crisis is happening: rising debt; stagnant income, and the gap has opened widest for minority borrowers.
/2


You look at that chart and you see the total failure of the human capital model to explain labor market outcomes, insofar as it even is a falsifiable social science hypothesis.
/3

Second, while it's true that total loan balances are increasing in income, student debt has increased most over time among the lowest-income groups. This tells you that student debt is becoming a marker of the disadvantaged rather than the advantaged.
/4


Third, balances on outstanding loans are rising over time, not declining. As I said in my last report, the student debt crisis is a crisis of non-repayment. This is why it's foolish to think the student debt is ever going to be paid back, whether it's cancelled now or not.
/5
SOCIETY
Jerusalem
Jerusalem
@JerusalemDemsas
For Black History Month, Vox is publishing a big series on rethinking policy for Black America.

I wrote 3,200 words on eradicating exclusionary zoning.

It's a 3 step formula: Persuade, incentivize, and if all else fails, SUE THE SUBURBS.

Thread

We know that exclusionary zoning is locking millions out of opportunity.

Work by @OppInsights, Richard Rothstein, Ta-Nehisi Coates, @nhannahjones, @RickKahlenberg, Chang-Tai Hsieh, Enrico Moretti and @ProfSchleich details the economic impact of these discriminatory policies.


51 years after the Fair Housing Act, it's never been seriously enforced. It's time to change that.

First things first, Biden has work to do to convince whoever can be convinced that there is a racial, environmental, and economic imperative to undo residential segregation.


Use whatever explanation works!

For sympathetic progressives Biden should link racial and environmental justice to ending exclusionary zoning.

For everyone else, he can simply make an economic

Second, there are many tools to incentivize localities that rely on federal dollars to reform their zoning codes.

There is a ton of federal money that can be conditioned on reforming exclusionary zoning laws. @ebwhamilton has some good ideas on this front.
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2/ Nov. 3rd, so for them to deny that now is absolutely absurd. Plus, we have an affidavit from an expert cyber-warfare [individual] who even shows the diagram of all the attacks coming in. We know that the VPN ... the Dominion people left those open and unencrypted on the night

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Patrick McKenzie
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A thread on HN about bad code in legacy projects both makes me think how little we've learned as a discipline over the years and, honestly, how little credit we give ourselves for some pretty major

Fun going down this list and thinking: "Hmm, plausible at a well-run modern software shop", "Hmm, possible, but requires implausible tradeoffs", "Literally disallowed by languages", and "If you were to attempt doing that our test suite wouldn't let you merge."

I think we as an industry celebrate (not quite the right word) failure too much and don't celebrate success nearly enough. There is no DailyWTF for competent execution, word of which generally stays pretty local to the source while incompetence passes into legend.

Alrighty let me try to thread the needle on being the change I want to see in the world while not giving away anything that will get me in trouble:

Ruby has wonderful developer ergonomics. Typed languages are easier for machines to guarantee the correctness of. We built a type checker for Ruby (and I believe it is slated for OSS release sometime).

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Billy Bostickson \U0001f3f4\U0001f441&\U0001f441 \U0001f193
Billy Bostickson 🏴👁&👁 ...
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@EricTopol @NBA @StephenKissler @yhgrad B.1.1.7 reveals clearly that SARS-CoV-2 is reverting to its original pre-outbreak condition, i.e. adapted to transgenic hACE2 mice (either Baric's BALB/c ones or others used at WIV labs during chimeric bat coronavirus experiments aimed at developing a pan betacoronavirus vaccine)

@NBA @StephenKissler @yhgrad 1. From Day 1, SARS-COV-2 was very well adapted to humans .....and transgenic hACE2 Mice


@NBA @StephenKissler @yhgrad 2. High Probability of serial passaging in Transgenic Mice expressing hACE2 in genesis of SARS-COV-2


@NBA @StephenKissler @yhgrad B.1.1.7 has an unusually large number of genetic changes, ... found to date in mouse-adapted SARS-CoV2 and is also seen in ferret infections.
https://t.co/9Z4oJmkcKj


@NBA @StephenKissler @yhgrad We adapted a clinical isolate of SARS-CoV-2 by serial passaging in the ... Thus, this mouse-adapted strain and associated challenge model should be ... (B) SARS-CoV-2 genomic RNA loads in mouse lung homogenates at P0 to P6.
https://t.co/I90OOCJg7o
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Brianne Kimmel \U0001f4ac
Brianne Kimmel 💬...
@briannekimmel
Shocking fact: Millennial men are less likely to work than any other age and gender demographic in America.

Today, there are 500,000 young men missing from the U.S. workforce.

Research suggests video games & improved leisure tech plays a role in the problem. 👇 Thread:

Following the 2007 to 2009 recession, 25 to 34 year old men exited high school with fewer middle-skill job opportunities than years prior.

During this time, we saw an increased number of men living with parents & choosing unemployment over lower paying jobs.

It's estimated that 24M millennials live w/ their parents.

1 in 4 living in their parents’ home neither go to school nor work.

What's more surprising? 9 in 10 who lived with their parents a year ago are still living there w/ no plans to leave.

Economists are calling millennial men a lost generation.

According to economist David Dorn:

“If you get to the point where you’re turning 30, you’ve never held a real job and you don’t have a college education, then it is very hard to recover at that point.”

Economists suggest this choosiness is a generational trait.

Forbes interview w/ a high school educated man:

"I’m very quick to get frustrated when people refuse to pay me what I’m worth."
“People feel that they have choice nowadays, and they
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John Papa
John Papa
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Choosing the Right JavaScript Framework

Thanks for joining me @pluralsight to talk about javascript frameworks. We had 150+ awesome questions, so I'll try to answer the ones I couldn't get to online right here in a tweet stream

Watch the video -->
https://t.co/G7zeiKhXme


Q. Do arrow functions really make dealing with JavaScript's "this" keywords easier?

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