cw: suicide, reactionary bs
[Thread]

One thing that really pissies me off are those facist reactionary "#ProLife" bigots.

And I'll explain in detail, WHY they are bigoted.

So strap in and hold tight...

Regardless if those advocate for the [very facist] idea of de-facto criminalizing #suicide or #abortions, "#ProLife" advocates aka. bigots are not willing to provide even a halfass alternative substitute as a figleaf to pseudo-legitimize their ideas.

I mean, regardless whether or not one person should be allowed to have a say into the health, life and well-beijng of another person is something agrees with [I think #ProChoice is the only non - reactionary-facist answer!]...

...it is clear that people don't actively seek suicide nor abortion unless they don't see another option and the alternatives are not acceptable to them.

Therefore I could at least respect [but not agree with] "#ProLife" people if they'd actually offer alternatives.

I.e. you don't want to have so many #abortion|s?
Then make actual sex - education mandatory, provide contraceptives, child-care and medical care for free whilst offering paid parental leave and undo the Gender Pay Gap ffs so that people are not economically forced into a decision

✨✨Dear Patriots✨✨

I love you all. ♥️ So it pains me deeply to tell you, I must be going. Someone must do this, for all of Humanity. I took the job before I knew what it truly meant. But accepted it once I knew what it meant.

It's true that a sufficiently high UBI could serve as an alternative to a $15 minimum wage, but I personally would prefer a combo of both plus a 4-day 32-hour week. Let's pay people more for work, support all unpaid work, and distribute employment and leisure time more equitably.

What the left needs to be honest about in regards to a $15 min wage is that although the overall effects will likely be positive, there will be impacts like reduced hours to compensate. Let's lean into that by leaving the 5-day 40-hour week behind. Every weekend should be 3 days.

It's also likely that a higher min wage will increase automation. Great! Let's do that! But that means less employment for humans. 4-day weeks share the available employment better, and universal basic income makes automation literally work for

UBI makes sure that micro-level responses to a higher minimum wage don't reduce people's total incomes if hours drop, or drop incomes to zero. For that person who can't find a job to pay them $15/hr, they can have $1500/mo vs $0. And unpaid workers would have $1500/mo vs $0 too.

If all we did was redefine full-time as 32 hours, businesses would need to pay more per hour so that employees got paid the same for less time. That would distribute leisure time better and I think raise productivity, but it wouldn't raise total incomes, which need to be raised.

Some thoughts on remote working...

Remote makes communication skills more critical. Some of this is valuable anyway (clarity, conciseness, logical structure) but can be compensated for with co-location. Some of this is easy with co-location but becomes difficult with remote (non-verbal cues, humanisation).

Externalise everything. People can't read your mind, especially with reduced non-verbal cues, nor can they remember everything. Get it of your head into something other people can interact with. Words and pictures, not just words. Logical structure, not just a freeform dump.

No unwritten rules (GitLab), AKA a simpler expression of Kanban's "make process policies explicit".

Distribute decision-making with decision rules/guard rails. This is an example of "no unwritten rules". At larger scales, I expect "just trust people to make good decisions" leading to either a mess or indecision.

NEW from me:

Two Christian right organizers of rallies and marches promoting "stolen election" and "election fraud" lies worked for the U.S. Department of Health and Human

The main rally, the Jericho March, held on the National Mall on Dec. 12, helped lay the groundwork for Jan.

The Jericho March organizers partnered with Ali Alexander and Stop the Steal, which was later at the center of the Jan. 6 insurrection.

#capitolsiegereligion

Other rally speakers included Oath Keepers' Stewart Rhodes and conspiracist Alex Jones, both, who according to new reporting from the @nytimes last night and the @wsj this morning, were at the center of the Capitol insurrection.

NYT, on

Another thread so soon? This one's going to be about a classic argument, sex determination. There are five methods of sex determination and I'm going to go into depth on my arguments on why I state that sex is able to be determined in all cases. #intersex

As you know if you follow me, there are five factors in sex determination. I've briefly gone into this in other threads but this thread is dedicated entirely to dissecting this whole thing apart. You only need one, or two for 99.98% of people when they are born.

However we're going to talk about those who are "ambiguously sexed" like myself and that brings me to my next argument and point.

The five determination methods in question:
Karyotype, Presenting Genitalia, Gonads, Hormone Production, Internal Reproductive Structures.

Starting with Karyotype.
XX, XY. The point is, humans can only possibly have either a X and Y in their karyotype. However a Y monosomy isn't possible, at least not survivable anyways. The X also comes before the Y as well, but there's more to this particular determination.

It isn't as simple as having a Y, or having only Xs that'd be far too easy for more ambiguous cases. So there's something known as SRY [Sex Region Y] Which is a region on the Y chromosome that is normally necessary for testis development and male development as a whole.

However you look at it, today has been an utter shambles from the Labour leadership.

Regardless of your thoughts about Jeremy Corbyn, you know he would’ve stood by teachers, parents, pupils and unions immediately m, and without waiting for a leaked Downing St briefing. 1/13

I've gotten questions about whether to emphasize U-6 as the "true unemployment rate". It is currently 11.1%.

I don't because I think the concept doesn't add much, it misses how unusually bad the labor market is now, is analytically flawed, and can be misleading.

Thread:

The official unemployment rate is 6.3%. It is unemployed (people looking for work) divided by the labor force (working or looking for work).

U-6 is 11.1%, it adds in "marginally attached" (discouraged workers & would take a job if it came along) and involuntary part-time.

DOESN'T ADD MUCH. U-6 is one of several alternative unemployment concepts produced monthly by the BLS. They are all useful to look at. But they also all pretty much up and down together so they rarely tell much of a different story.

MISSES HOW UNUSUALLY BAD THE LABOR MARKET IS NOW. The last time U-6 was around 11.1% the unemployment rate was 5.7%. If anything based on historic relationships U-6 makes the labor market seem bad (like in 2015) but not terrible (like in 2012).

The reason is that a large part of U-6 is part time for economic reasons (aka involuntary part time). This is up but actually not up an unusually large amount given the increase in unemployment. We've seen a lot of jobs lost but people with jobs, on average, working longer.

1 - @EFF revealed today how the LAPD have been requesting Ring doorbell cameras footage of Black Lives Matter protests (https://t.co/FtPoYH3Hn2). Here is a short thread on why this is part of a worrying bigger picture.

1.1 - Over 2,000 public safety agencies have signed formal partnerships with Ring worldwide. The partnerships allow police to use a law-enforcement portal to canvass local residents for footage without

1.2 - Warrants exist to protect us. Law enforcement needs to justify access on reasonable suspicion.

1.3 - Normalising bulk footage requests from people without warrants is dangerous. It adds to the state's plethora of mass surveillance tools.

2 - Public-Private surveillance partnerships can seriously undermine our freedoms and alter democratic societies by normalising surveillance. You shouldn't have to worry that your tech purchases might be used for surveillance purposes.

Does Creality support suck? Fuck yeah. You want a Xiaomi or Apple printer? A blob of injection-molded plastic with proprietary filament and software? That's where it was all going a few years ago. Prusa is great- but many aren't going to buy one delivering pizza or mowing lawns.

Canon, HP, Stratasys, the big names- they wanted in. But they lost & we fucking won- we didn't ekk out a little slice of the pie like Linux, @adrianbowyer's RepRap derivatives won on a vast scale. We absolutely dominate. We kicked their asses so hard they're scared to try again.

We've got this one little corner of hardware with no Jobs. no Edison, all Woz and Telsa. Our team for once. 3D printing is owned by the hackers the way nothing else is. And dealing with people who don't get why it's *not* injection-molded, cartridge taking, Big Box Store garbage-

-why it does not have a massive markup for slick marketing and "genius bars"- is exhausting.
Look we get it- you want all your technology to be indistinguishable from magic, you don't want to hack, or learn, or explore. You can go buy that- but why tear down others who want to?

VR, you know you're fucked right? You're going to have ads beamed straight into your eyeballs, tuned by the best AI Facebook can bring to bear on your distracted brain. And you'll have zero choice but to play by proprietary rules if you want access to that entire medium.

Thanks to @StoatlyL for making me look at this document. An organisation on children’s media which is instrumental in an All-Party Parliamentary Group on Children’s Media. Provides more information on the CBBC programme on a “transgender child” called Leo.

Searching for heroes they alighted on the topic of gender. The BBC seems to be obsessed with fulfilling its diversity objectives by obsessive rumination on “gender”. Sneaking propaganda onto children’s TV is the low point.

In this document the maker of the programme, Cat Lewis, talks about the editorial decisions and the programme advisors

Pushing boundaries by promoting a bodily disassociative condition to impressionable children.

Emotive narratives are key to normalising ideas about children being born in the wrong body. That thing that nobody says....oh wait.

1/ Further thoughts on @DavidAFrench's important essay on #ChristianNationalism.

It's great to see a leading evangelical thinker publicly engaging the topic.

But....

2/ It would be even better if @DavidAFrench would engage with work on #ChristianNationalism by scholars and journalists like:

@ndrewwhitehead @socofthesacred @praxishabitus @sarahposner @kathsstewart @AntheaButler @Nicholef and yours truly @GorskiPhilip

Also...

3/ With the work of black theologians such as:

Willie Jennings, @JemarTisby @stewartdantec @esaumccaulley to name just a few.

If he did, then....

4/ He'd know that there are much better and more nuanced definitions of #ChristianNationalism than the one offered by @ThomasSKidd, who is a smart guy, but not a scholar of the subject.

Plus...

5/ He'd know that the phenomenon is, in fact, much more widespread than he implies, not just amongst white evangelicals but also amongst non-evangelical white Protestants and white Catholics....See "Taking America Back for God" for the receipts.

So, why do I keep saying "white"?

It was some days to Christmas and as a TEAM, they had just finished an intervention for a brother. He was still mulling over certain revelations from the prayers when his wife got a call.

It was from a colleague who was in distress and was crying over the phone in confusion.

"They just chased me out of the house I was staying...again".

The young lady had a history of rejection wherever she went to and even when she got a job, she was so surprised because she was rejected everywhere.

It was in her place of employment she met his wife.

His wife quickly gave him a breakdown and he told her "Let her come to the house in the morning".

By 7:30AM, she was in the house.

Immediately he saw her, he asked her "How old are you?"

"26" she responded.

She actually looked 40. Her responses didn't alarm him.

He understood certain spiritual realities and hers was one of such. It was evident, there was another occupant in her.

She went on and on about her circumstance which led to him asking her a question:

"Are you Born Again?"

"I attend church and I have Pastors I go to..."

"...who pray with me and give me prayer points". She said.

"So you have not given your life to Christ" he asked trying to ensure she understood the question

"No" she responded quietly.

"Stand on your feet, and join hands with my wife and repeat after me" I said.

Thread:

Recently, doxing of IMT has become a tool to suppress vocal Muslim voices, with rival Sanghis doxing those who hold opposing views. Doxers aim to escalate their conflict with targets from online to the real world, by revealing personal information which includes:1/n

1. Home addresses
2. Workplace details
3. Personal phone numbers
4. Social security numbers
5. Bank account or credit card information
6. Private correspondence
7. Criminal history
8. Personal photos
9. Embarrassing personal details 2/n

Suspension methods used

1. Dig up old tweets to see clues
2. Mark tweets which violate twitter terms and mass report
3. Agent provocateur - Use of trolls to incite to say something that violates twitter policy. 3/n

Doxing methods used:

1. Usage of twitter archive to keep track of a target account. It saves even deleted tweets. After the identity is known, the archived tweets (even if you deleted them) are used to report to goverment, police, employer etc 4/n

2. Social Engineering; Social Engineering is a manipulation technique that exploits human error or friendliness to gain private information. An agent acts as friendly and then lures the unsuspecting person into exposing their own data or their data from someone else. 5/n

Now ministering for second service: Pst Joel Awogu @AwoguJoel
Topic: Man in Three Dimension
Text: 1Thess 5:23
Sometimes, we do things amiss without understanding who we are.
Who are you? Do you know what manner of being you are?

#ChurchGRA #GRAService #Restoration

Man is a combination of three things. The Body, Soul, and Spirit.
Take good care of these three things. Most times you guide your car, phone. Do you guide your spirit?

#ChurchGRA #GRAService #Restoration

God relates to us through our spirit and if you don't take care of your spirit, you won't hear from God.

#ChurchGRA #GRAService #Restoration

What do you do to your soul? Mind what gets in your mind.
Nobody makes you feel bad without your consent. Mind what makes you envious of others. These are things that destroy the soul.

#ChurchGRA #GRAService #Restoration

Protect your spirit from what can quench your fire. Things like laziness, pleasure. Mind what brings these three down (Spirit, Soul, and Body)

#ChurchGRA #GRAService #Restoration

731 days ago I set out a goal that I had no way of knowing it would go this far. No real reason to even do it, other than to expand my learning capabilities. I started using Duolingo to learn Spanish. 15-45 minutes per day, everyday for 2 years straight. Every morning.

You may ask yourself what is the significance of that? Well, I wasn't awake at that time & I was re-learning life as I had been a criminal & drug addict who had only completed his sentence 1½ years earlier. Everything I did was without God. Then something changed while in jail.

I began to pray about 90 days in.

That was the day I was no longer a drug addict. Ya see, I was still planning on getting high & wanting the prescription drugs. Until that fateful night when I prayed. Like magic, I stopped thinking about getting high. A year later, I'm about to

Be released in 2-3 months & I decide to start working out. I was 280 lbs about 4 years earlier and lost that weight due to a physical job & cutting out sugar. But never worked out & at this moment I started to work out. A small goal that I would tell everyone was what God wanted

Me to do. So, I did it. Little by little I started carving out a muscular physique & lost all the soft, doughy parts. Then comes along Spanish less than 2 years later. Another small goal of just take it little by little. No end in sight. I just want to see how good I can do.

Good morning, Baltimore. A thread on walking and writing. It will be boring but possibly helpful if you wish to walk or write more.

In my pre-pandemic life, there was lots of incidental walking. I averaged 2.4 miles a day, or 5,662 steps.

Pandemic life ended most incidental walking -- not daily walk to school, then coffee shop, fewer errands. In June, after finishing a book, I decided to shoot for 6-7k "deliberate" steps a day.

On December 1, I decided to up my daily mileage to 5 miles. That required more planning -- I couldn't get that done in the pre-dawn hours while my daughter sleeps. I would need to add a second walk, maybe a third.

Then I noticed that I was close to averaging 8k steps a day by year's end. Kind people here on Twitter, using this strange magic called algebra, calculated that I would need to average 10.5k miles a day to up my year average to 8k.