Tomorrow, January 6th, MAGA chuds, Proud Boys, and white supremacists are planned to descend on Washington D.C. to contest the election. Among them will be NSC-131, a New England based neo-Nazi organization. Let's welcome them by saying hi to one of their members, Eddie Stuart!

The numbers on their face for the @FCC RDOF auction are exciting - lots of Gigabit winners. But it’s important to remember the job is just starting. These rural areas don’t magically get Gig today or tomorrow. 1/

The job is only done and the celebration can really only begin once we see that rural Americans are actually going to get the broadband they’ve been promised. 2/

And that’s the rub here - at least from preliminary indications, there are LOTS of question marks clearly hanging out there once you look past the gloss and proclamations. And since we won’t know for maybe 5 years if it worked, due diligence is essential now. 3/

A number of big winners have offered some service but never done Gig. This would be like giving hundreds of millions of $ to firms that have repaved residential streets to now design & build our interstate highway bridges. 4/

A number of big winners are using tech that has done Gig (maybe) only in tightly controlled applications that don’t look anything like rural America. This would be like giving interstate highway $ to firms who’ve built lots of scale models but never actually built a bridge. 5/

There's been a lot of talk about the missionary killed by the natives of North Sentinel Island. They're probably so aggressive because of this weirdo, Maurice Vidal Portman. So here's a big thread about this creep and some facts from my decade-long obsession with the island.

The Sentinelese are often described as “uncontacted,” but this not strictly true. They had a very significant contact in 1880 with Commander Portman.

Portman, the black sheep third son of some minor noble, was assigned by the English Royal Navy to administer and pacify the Andaman Islands, a job he pursued from 1880-1900 with the full measure of his own perversity.

Portman was erotically obsessed with the Andamanese, and he indulged his passion for photography by kidnapping members of various tribes and posing them in mock-Greek homoerotic compositions.

During his 20 years in a sexualized heart of darkness, Portman measured and cataloged every inch of his prisoner’s bodies, with an obsessive focus on genitals.

We are all products of our own environments. Our environments shape our character, our personality, our habits, our identity.

The environment that Ousmane Dembélé grew up in and the environment that FC Barcelona seeks to engulf its youngsters with could not be more different.

The Great Gatsby starts with a life lesson.

"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one, just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."

Ousmane hasn’t had the advantages that La Masia youngsters have had. That’s why he’s Ousmane.

Like every La Masia youngster, Ousmane grew up with a dream: playing for Barça.

Like every youngster, he fought to stand out amid a talented group of players, the majority of which would fail to go pro.

However, his football education was the polar opposite to that of La Masia.

Ousmane did not reside in one of the most expensive academies in Europe: he lived in a low-cost public housing unit in Normandy. He did not play in the well-trimmed pitches of La Masia, he played in the concrete jungles of Évreux. These disadvantages made him the man he is today.

While street soccer encourages individuality & creative freedom, academy-based training like La Masia encourages unselfishness & teamwork.

That’s why Barça produce certain types of 20-year-olds like a factory line. It’s also why Barça spent €145m on a 20-year-old Ousmane.

Nearly a year ago, the Tablighi Jamaat controversy took over India’s media. Around 3,500 foreign nationals had visited India to attend the Tablighi Jamaat event at the Nizamuddin Markaz Mosque in Delhi.

With the lockdown being announced on March 24, 2020, several attendees had moved to different parts of the country to attend smaller gatherings in local mosques.

Around 960 foreign nationals were held at quarantine and in states like UP, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Karnataka, etc. were sent straight to prison.

There was an outpour of Anti-Muslim bigotry in much of Indian news media with this event where it ramped up its demonisation of the community.

For weeks, the attendees of the Tablighi Jamaat event were named the “super-spreaders” of COVID and in several cases, Maulana Mohammad Saad was called a terrorist and “the maulana of death”.

It's been a whole day since we tweeted Part 2 of this chapter, so let us remind you: #AdamSmith just said that the colonies got nothing that helped them succeed from the mother country. (IV.vii.c) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

So these two opening sentences are pretty heckin’ sarcastic:
Now we've seen the great advantages the colonies got (they got nothing!) (IV.vii.c.1)
So what have been the great advantages to Europe! (IV.vii.c.2)

Seems like there’s a...tone there. #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

Europeans buy goods from America, and Americans buy European goods as well. Even countries that don’t trade directly with America have benefited. (IV.vii.c.3–8) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

The mother countries restrict colonial trade (esp the exclusive right to buy from or sell to their colonies). That's a dead weight on the increase of the wealth of nations. Everything is more expensive, everyone enjoys less of it. (IV.vii.c.9) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

Maybe European countries get added security? In ancient times, empires expected military support and revenue from their colonies, and they got it.
18thC colonies? Not so much. (IV.vii.c.11–13) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets