BC SOCIETY
Saved by @Mollyycolllinss

I’ve done two interviews in the past day with media about the Twitter/Facebook bans and the Parler shut down.

I’m trying to use these opportunities to stress something is getting lost in all the debates about the action: conversation about free expression is the wrong debate. 1/

 It’s pretty clear at this point the First Amendment doesn’t apply. The only people making that argument are craven politicians who are trying to gin up anger.

An expression debate focuses on the content. What I keep underlining is social media is a distribution platform too. 2/
What this means is that when someone gets on and posts conspiracy theory content or seditious incitement, it isn’t a question of whether it will be distributed. The publishing platform has the tools for outreach and connection that let that content travel. 3/
Think about me in my basement printing up some nutty manifesto on my laser printer. I still have a problem of reach. How do I get that message out? I could walk the neighborhood or the city, but I’m limited by time and ability.

Working with others takes social connection. 4/
Publishing through a third-party allows for mass printing, but the real power is distribution. They have marketing, sales, shipping arms to make sure those things end up in the hands of others. 5/
All of that in legacy media requires relationships, contracts, etc. Just ask Josh Hawley about his book.

So while Twitter and Facebook did make publishing much easier, the real shift was that it completely blew up the barriers to distribution. 6/
Free speech debates focus on the content. If you look at the statements from the social networks carefully, you can see their larger concerns are about how that material travels, how it flows from a single person to infect people who might not otherwise dabble in that stuff. 7/
And look, the companies tried. I think the efforts were weak, but it’s not like they didn’t do everything possible to avoid bans. They tried tags, fact checks, oversight boards, etc. They knew the problem was spread. What did conservatives do? They called it censorship anyhow. 8/
Whatever your view of the speech merits, if you’re a social media exec and seeing that your platform was being used to spread mountains of dangerous lies that led to an insurrection, that we were minutes away from members of Congress being captured …. feel the weight of that. 9/

More from Society

Brittany Packnett
Brittany Packnett
@MsPackyetti
We should stop confusing what someone was doing when we became aware of them with all they are capable of, interested in, or ever hope to be

Let folks have their many talents, interests and gifts. Life is far more fun with variety, loves.

A lot of folks have come to know me as an activist & I’m grateful that folks care to know me at all.

But I wasn’t born in 2014. I was a whole teacher, executive, policy person, speaker, arts and culture lover, reader, writer, woman of faith, fashion and more before 4 yrs ago 🤷🏾‍♀️

We rightfully complain that marginalized people are not allowed to be fully human.

But we internalize and transfer our oppression daily. It’s a smog. We all breathe it in & act it out.

And then tell WoC “girl ain’t you supposed to be a _______? Why you doing ____?”

Can I live?

And don’t go reading anything personal into this-this isn’t about me necessarily and it’s no subtweet (I try hard not to do that.)

I’ve just been observing that behavior more and more lately. Especially when it comes to marginalized folks.

Evolution should be our aspiration.

“Can’t knock the hustle” should be our anthem.

As long as someone isn’t bringing active and continual harm, why can’t they explore their many sides?
SOCIETY
Garfield but Anti-Fascist
Garfield but Anti-Fasc...
@AntifaGarfield
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!


Edward Stuart, from Chester, New Hampshire, has been a member of Nationalist Social Club (NSC) since the very beginning and is a staple participant in their actions. He is known in NSC chats as "Carl Jung" and is well connected in the New England Nazi scene.
2/


NSC-131 is a neo-Nazi group that was started in Massachusetts in early 2020 by Chris Hood. You can learn more about NSC and it's members in these threads:


Eddie describes his ideology as "Esoteric Hitlerism" which is an occult form of Nazism that literally worships Adolf Hitler as a god, or, specifically, as an incarnation of the Hindu God Vishnu. Here is Ed holding the RigVeda with some of his occult Nazi pals. Interesting Ed!
4/


Much of this ideological insight was gained from Eddie's Twitter, where he originally used his "Carl Jung" persona and reposts explicit neo-fascist content and racist memes. In one edited picture, Eddie can be seen at an NSC event in late June 2020 holding a Nazi Sonnenrad flag
5
SOCIETY
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Miss C
Miss C
@Credible_Intel
1. Most people are aware of the fail doxes posted by Jamilla Moor on @Snakeeater36 and myself. I'm going to go into the details (in layman terms) of exactly how a specific group of duhnonymous idiots came up with these fail doxes & I'll prove that they're wrong.

2. @Snakeeater36 posted this screenshot on his TL. He had exposed the page source code on tweet which included an image. Anyone can do this in Chrome by opening a tweet, clicking on the image, then right click on any open space on the screen, select "inspect", then "network".

3. In fact I did the same by pulling up a different tweet and image. You'll see the IP highlighted in yellow and the region Dallas TX. It's not my IP. It belongs to Akamai which is identified. Why is that important.......


4. Well Akamai is a Content Delivery Network also known as a CDN. A CDN, is a geographically distributed network of proxy servers (make note of the term "proxy" servers) and their data centers. More later on why this is important relative to the fail doxes.

5. CDNs allow companies like Twitter to provide better performance in uploading content, like images, by distributing the service spatially relative to end users. Rather than pushing content directly (left), Twitter uses CDN networks (right) to push/pull images from end users.
SOCIETY
Lindsey Simmons
Lindsey Simmons
@LynzforCongress
When I was 25, I worked as a legislative assistant in the Missouri General Assembly.

It was a dream job, honestly.

But that dream dissipated the day the #MoLeg decided to name Rush Limbaugh as an “honorable Missourian” and place his bust in the “Hall of Famous Missourians.”

1/

The Hall of Famous Missourians sits in the Missouri State Capitol.

There are busts of Mark Twain, Dred Scott, Josephine Baker, Harry Truman and other legends of history.

The day I learned Rush Limbaugh would join their ranks, I thought it was a joke.

2/

We received phone calls from constituents appalled that Missouri would honor a man who had become infamous that year for calling a college student a “slut.”

And who just that week had continued spreading the racist birtherism lie about our then-President, Barack Obama.

3/

What I learned that day is that it wasn’t *despite* his racism, but because of it that he received this award.

It’s because he created a universe where it was permissible to lynch with language America’s first black President.

4/

Several State Representatives and their staffers intended to protest the vote and the selection.

By the time we made it to the doors of the House Floor, we weren’t allowed in. It was Republicans only. The doors were locked and secured by the Highway Patrol.

5/
SOCIETY
Paul P.H. Wilson\u269b
Paul P.H. Wilson⚛
@gonuke
It is simply not correct to point fingers at wind & solar energy as we try to understand the situation in TX. The system (almost) had a plan for weather (almost) like this. 1/x


It relied on very little wind energy - that was the plan. It relied on a lot of natural gas - that was the plan. It relied on all of its nuclear energy - that was the plan. 2/x

There was enough natural gas, coal and nuclear capacity installed to survive this event - it was NOT "forced out" by the wind energy expansion. It was there. 3/x

Wind, natural gas, coal and nuclear plants all failed to deliver on their expectations for long periods of time. The biggest gap was in natural gas! The generators were there, but they were not able to deliver. 4/x

It may be fair to ask why there is so much wind energy in ERCOT if we do NOT expect it to deliver during weather events like this, but that is an entirely different question - and one with a lot of great answers!! 5/x
SOCIETY

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@NiveditaNarayan
Remembering the Bengali scientist Dr Subhash Mukhopadhyay- the Pioneer of IVF in India, the creator of India's first and world's second child using IVF on his birth anniversary. The Father of IVF in India who was rewarded with suicide was born on 16.01.1931in Hazaribagh.
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Dr. Subhash was the son of a doctor and studied at the National Medical College in Kolkata after completing his schooling. Fascinated by innovations in gynaecological surgery from his early days as a medical student, he completed his PhD in reproductive physiology +


from the University of Calcutta before going to the Edinburgh University in UK for a PhD in reproductive endocrinology. On his return to India in 1978, he started researching ovulation and spermatogenesis. Soon after, he teamed up with Sunit Mukherji, a cryobiologist +


and Saroj Kanti Bhattacharya, a gynaecologist, to work on a method of in-vitro fertilization for a patient (Bela Agarwal) with damaged fallopian tubes. +


Mukhopadhyay with a double PhDstarted work on IVF techniques in the mid 60s and created history by becoming the first physician in India and second in the world after British physicians Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe) to perform the In-vitro fertilisation. +
INDIA
Anu Satheesh \U0001f1ee\U0001f1f3
Anu Satheesh 🇮🇳...
@AnuSatheesh5
Panniyur Sri Varahamurthy Temple Palakkad, Kerala
#KeralaTemples 🚩

Panniyur Sri Varahamurthy Temple is located in Pattambi Taluk of Palakkad District. This is believed to be the first temple in Kerala, where Prathishta was done by Parasurama

Story says that, Parashurama after


Creating Kerala was doing Tapasya here. But he was disturbed as the land faced turbulence. Parashurama sought Narada’s help, who advised him to pray to Vishnu. Parashurama started praying Maha Vishnu. Finally Maha Vishnu appeared and told to do Prathishta of his Varaha Avatar.


As Earth is saved in Varaha Avatar, this temple is famous to solve land related issues.

Many people conduct Bhoomi puja here, which is very special here. They bring sand from around the temple which is used for pooja and then has to be returned to the same spot 👇


from where it was taken.
It is also believed that Perumthachan, the legedary craftsman has abandoned his tools here.
Om Shri Varaha Murthaye Namah
🙏🕉🙏
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dan spaceman
dan spaceman
@ohlaika
ugh i wanted to do a thread about the wars in Star Wars and how the two outlying wars (the clone wars in the prequels and the cold war/civil war in the sequels) are really weird but i don't feel like it any more.

my first argument is that the Clone Wars were a really complex morally gray moment in Star Wars canon in like, 5 different directions and I'd kind of like to know why Lucas did that.

especially with the direct line that's drawn in the OT with the allegory of WW2 and Vietnam with the rebels being the Vietnamese and the Empire being America. That...doesn't exist in the Clone Wars.

for starters: it's weird it's called the Clone Wars. I get why, because that's what Kenobi calls it in STAR WARS, but the clones are a small facet in the larger story of the war.

the clones basically only exist as a macguffin in AOTC that is...extremely confusing ultimately. Because if you accept that Sidious has this grand master plan to use this war to destabilize the Republic and form an Empire...it's way too complex.
CULTURE
SK
SK
@sk_diary1
Prasanna Venkatesa Perumal #temple -Gunaseelam,Near Trichy,TN #Thread

Gunaseela Mahatmyam,a chapter of Bhavishyottara Purana describes greatness of this place.

Venkatachlapathi of Tirumala Tirupati appeared b4 Gunaseela Rishi here,so Gunaseelam is known as Ten(South)Tirupati


Prasanna Venkatesa Perumal is in a standing posture with 4 arms holding sankha & chakra in the upper hands.The lower right hand is in abhaya pose,blessing devotees &left hand is in kati hasta,resting on waist.

A sceptre(senkkol)rests on right shoulder,with which this murti is believed to cure people affected by mental illness.These patient stay here for a period-48 days& participate in poojas&most of them get relieved of their problems.There is a temple run Mental Rehabilitation center

#storytimethread -As per Sthala Puranam,existence of this temple is due to efforts of Gunaseela Rishi, a disciple of Thalpiya Maharishi.
Thalpiya Maharishi along with his disciple Gunaseela Rishi once went to Himalayas.On his way back, Gunaseela Rishi stayed back at Tirupathi.


He was so wanted to have darshan of Venkatachalapathy in Gunaseelam near his asharam & bless the devotees.

He came back, bathed in the Cauvery,took blessing from his guru &undertook severe penance here in his ashram in Gunaseelam.
RELIGION
David Rothkopf
David Rothkopf
@djrothkopf
Pretending that voting for Trump or denying climate change or suggesting the solution to every problem is more guns is a legitimate point of view, worthy of respect is not "how America works." It is how it dies.

People in a free society are entitled to any point of view no matter how obviously wrong or outlandish or destructive provided they do not impose their views on others.

But suggesting that something ignorant or divorced from reality warrants the same kind of treatment in public debate as something based in fact or at least credible is absurd and when done on behalf of a society in public media or academic settings it is self-destructive.

We would not grant media coverage or much bandwidth at all to a group that argued that unicorns exist or that there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Yet views like denying climate change or basing policy decisions on sweeping, obvious lies, are just as unsound.

Somewhere, somehow, judgments must be made. Some behaviors are wrong and must be condemned. Someone must challenge lies and demand facts. Coddling people who embrace idiocies does not help them no matter how loudly they demand to be coddled.
POLITICS