Many years back I never liked you, pre 2015, I started seeing the hope in your candidacy knowing fully well that you'll someday make us proud as a nation. You came with the hope mantra, the larger populace joined your train and the mandate was delivered, but because our.../1

I had the most bizarre experience outside of a bar yesterday, which my partner very aptly described as "toxic mask-unlinity." (A Thread.)

I was standing outside, waiting for a lyft to get home, when two cis men came out of the bar to smoke cigarettes. They're discussing the masks that folks are wearing in California at the moment because of the very dangerous air pollution from the fires happening.

I happen to be wearing one of those masks, because I think lungs are important and I like breathing. I dunno. One of the men notices me standing there, and says, "Like this f*cker right here. What is this shit?"

He goes on a homophobic rant about me, the pansy with a mask, and what a Very Manly Man he is because he's not afraid to smoke a pack of cigarettes while California is on fire. He doesn't need a mask, because something-something-heterosexual-something.

And part of me is just... impressed by the fact that this dude thinks he's Owning The Gay Libs by not wearing a mask to protect his lungs from smoke and particles in the air that are literally DANGEROUS... while chain-smoking. Outside of a bar.

THE LAST STAND OF PAVAN KHIND - THE 300 BATTLE OF INDIA

A long🧵that u must read

In desperate times, great men come forth. Those men who are ready to sacrifice all of their lives work for a single cause.

Baji Prabhu Deshpande is one such man.

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Battle was between the Maratha Warrior Baji Prabhu Deshpande and Sidi Masoud of Adil Shahi Sultanate.

In 1660, the Maratha King Shri Chhatrapati Shivaji was trapped in the fort of Panhala, under siege and vastly outnumbered by an Adilshahis army led by Sidi Masoud.

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And while everyone is thinking that finally the Maratha king will be subdued, Shivaji planned to escape to the fort of Vishalgadh. It was administered by a Maratha chieftain named Range Narayan Orpe under Shivaji.

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For months the siege warfare continued as Shivaji made sure that the food source of the Besieging army drops down, due to which they will initiate a general assault on the castle.

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Shivaji, Baji Prabhu, and around 600 of their best troops, hardened mountaineers of the Maval region, would dash through the Adilshahis force at night.

A man named Shiva Kashid, who resembled Shivaji in appearance, had volunteered to dress like the king and get captured.

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Hey, for people interested in this stuff, here's a thread about a change we made to running our facebook account:

So, about 5 years ago, we got on facebook. Why? Well, facebook has a big audience and they like to consume on facebook. So, we started posting comics there, even though we got paid nothing and facebook made money off the free content.

Why? Because back then, once in a while, you would say "also hey, I sell books" or "hey, I'm going to be signing at this event" and your facebook followers would actually see it.

Effectively, the implicit old arrangement was "facebook lets me reach readers efficiently, and I supply facebook with free content they run ads on."

Over time, like a bad business partner, facebook basically made it impossible to reach your audience without *paying them*. Thus, you supply them free content on which they run ads, and you get nothing in exchange.

(THREAD) Pre-election Russia collusion may take down Trump. It's equally possible the Trumps' pre- and post-election collusion with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Israel will do it—a course of collusion also connected to the Kremlin. I explain here. I hope you'll read on and retweet.

1/ I must stress how unbelievably complex the "Grand Bargain" theory of the Trump-Russia case is—a different thing from saying it's not substantiated. It's substantiated in *almost every single particular*—it just *also* happens to be very confusing. Not byzantine—just confusing.

2/ The basics: Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the UAE all view Iran as their chief regional enemy. Iran is propped up by Russia. Therefore the Saudis, Israelis, and Emiratis all need a US government willing to find a way to get the Kremlin to *stop* supporting Iran in the Middle East.

3/ The best way to get Russia to stop supporting Iran—or reduce support—was/is to drop all sanctions on Russia over its 2014 annexation of Crimea, as that'd be worth *trillions* to the Kremlin over the next decade. Everyone knew that Clinton wouldn't do this—and that Trump would.

4/ Per the NYT, on August 3, 2016, Donald Trump Jr. met secretly at Trump Tower with a Saudi and Emirati emissary, George Nader, as well as an Israeli intelligence expert, Joel Zamel, with *significant* ties to both Israeli intelligence *and* Russian oligarchs allied with Putin.