@agknowitall

I wanted to reach out to you regarding some of your earlier research on Hezbollah in North Carolina and share some of my own findings, which have disturbing implications in present day North Carolina.

1/

I've discovered that Hezbollah's network is not only alive and well in North Carolina, but has found interesting new partners for the 21st century.
I discovered this the other day, which attaches an economic theory to what I've already found on my

This thread provides some detail that, while not exactly solid proof represents a hot smoking gun of

The following thread represents another facet of my work, which tangentially connects. More smoking

As a *former* Assistant Managing Editor of The Washington Times, I think you'll appreciate the significance of this, as it relates to my research on Hezbollah.

Hezbollah, as you probably know, trains in and is armed by North Korea.

5/

Fuck it.

My real pronouns are She / Her

I can't adequately describe how terrifying it is to tweet that as someone who's just moved, been out of work for months, left an abusive relationship and in general has just lived a live on the margins of actual economic survival.

To all my Trans family, I'm sorry it took me this long. To every man that's ever joked about queerness with a hint of violence, I remember you.

Special shout out to @DJDague , @CortanaV, @msyeseniac @TheVTran & @beardswin for their crucial and timely and seemingly effortless support that may have seemed a small gesture to them but were bricks in the support leading up to me coming out to my mom yesterday

Shout out to all the incredible women in my life who have made me felt seen and understood literal decades before I had the language to name the disembodiment I've endured.

my adhd coping mechanism is I talk to tens of thousands of people so they'll follow me back, then I livetweet my daily activities and get that lil dopamine hit or whatever when they click the heart when I type "ok just sent that email I been procrastinating on"

I'm currently writing the event description for my feb 14 salon which is on romance and eroticism, so I absent-mindedly googled "eroticism salon", and, uh, I found this strange and magnificent photograph. I want a painting of this

wait, I have that app on my phone that's how I made my profile picture

progress on my email is not being made. but who cares about my email. (well, anna does... but never mind her for now, i'm sure she'll forgive me). ART is currently being made. art comes first

art takes time

#RightNow for every singel one of us charities are either directly helping us or helping people or causes we care about 1/11

#RightNow there will be people living on your street who rely on charitable support 2/11

#RightNow you might be heading out to a green space, almost certainly cared for by volunteers and charities 3/11

#RightNow there are charity shops shuttered on your local high street, leaving charities without a key source of income 4/11

#RightNow you'll probably know someone close who has received a vaccination, guided through the process by a volunteer 5/11

1/ End of year thread: in December 2019 I found out I was selected to be a 2020-2021 Public Scholar @Concordia. Though My tenure wouldn't start until May (when I started this Mega thread). I decided to start sharing more of my research in January 2020.

People get it confused.

Productive conversations are not had by communicating with people who think differently than you.

It's communicating with people who share similar reservoirs of information, yet come to different conclusions that create productive conversation.

(1/12)

I have had many unproductive conversations with people on Twitter, and the primary reason why those conversations are not productive is because they are generating conclusions from a set of narratives and interpretations that I don't share.

It is all about...

(2/12)

...these differences in information.

Even if you have different moral or political values, those can be identified quickly and you can see the reason for the disagreement.

But, when someone is reading publications much different than you and listening to podcasts...

(3/12)

...you don't, then unfortunately the conversation you two will have will be fraught with confusion and misunderstanding.

You will become frustrated with each other, because the facts you use to build an argument are facts unbeknownst to them, and vice-versa.

(4/12)

But if you are speaking to someone who is drawing from the same body of ideas, but somehow comes to a different conclusion - then you have the dialogical jackpot!

I relearn this lesson monthly when communicating with anti-social justice folks.

I am...

(5/12)

What do you think your students might draw if you asked them to draw a mathematician? What if you asked them why someone would hire a mathematician?

This study asked exactly that to 470 year 8's across 5 countries. The results are depressing. But also hilarious.

Thread...
1/n

Here are some of their drawings:
"an old stain, he's too lazy to wash his shirt" "fat from doing nothing but maths".

2/n

This student drew a mathematician that is apparently a devil teacher...

3/n

This is umm... concerning

4/n

"You should all know this"

5/n

NEW: For more than 10 years, Scarborough residents have been promised improved transit — including a subway. But nothing has been done. Has Scarborough been taken for a ride https://t.co/Q3VP5lxK6w /1

With news the Scarborough RT will fail before anything is built, leaving transit users on the bus, possibly for years, I compiled everything I know about the decisions that led us here, for the first time in chronological order. This will be a long thread. /2

December 2010: During his first day in office, Rob Ford declares David Miller's Transit City LRT plan is dead (Spoiler: It's not). /3

March 2011: But it doesn't happen like that. Ford signs a memorandum of understanding with Metrolinx to kill the Finch & Sheppard LRTs and completely bury the Eglinton Crosstown without council's approval. The original seven-top Scarborough LRT is part of this non-binding deal /4

February 2012: In a major defeat, council rebukes this transit arrangement that requires their approval and votes to build the Transit City lines, including the Scarborough LRT. Ford’s TTC chair Karen Stintz leads the revolt. /5

The latest sex abuse scandal to rock France seems to be reinforcing one important thing: French public opinion reaction to stories of sexual abuse is changing in significant ways. (A

I noticed it first about ten years ago, some years before the #metoo movement, when rape allegations were made against then IMF-Director Dominique Strauss-Khan.

When the head of a major French publishing house Vanessa Springora wrote about being groomed and abused as a teen by feted French novelist Gabriel Matzneff, it caused revulsion and soul-searching throughout the country. (Read her fantastic book “Consent”)

I’ve been thinking a bit about being openly or obviously ‘other’.

My life experiences have been fairly unusual, & while I do enjoy communicating about this, it can also be quite othering being perpetually the odd-one-out in a group who folks ask to explain stuff.

THREAD

And while it’s well-intentioned, and I think it’s important that folks actually listen to autistic/trans/POC/etc people when it comes to understanding our experiences, it can also be a lot of pressure when I’m the only autistic nb non-white person in a group of cis white folks

And over time even when folks listen and are respectful, I feel that self conscious, and also worried that they are placing me on a sort of ‘pedestal of otherness’ that actually can stop them from truly empathising and understanding.

To start to understand folks who are different, it’s important to both acknowledge how different experiences can be(esp if yours are more ‘typical’), but also acknowledge that they are not SO different that you should not try to challenge yourself to try and understand better

We should not be stopping at “I can’t possibly understand what it’s like to be you” but instead always be trying, even with the knowledge that it might be difficult. This is the perhaps the kind of labour that NTs, cis, white, and other dominant groups owe marginalised identities

If you read a textbook-style account of conflicts centering around the Protestant Reformation(s), it'll probably focus on theological disputes: justification by faith, the lay chalice, baptism, the meaning of "hoc est corpus meum," predestination... kind of thing.

But a lot of the most persuasive work – at least IMHO – on religious conflicts in the 16th and 17th cautions against focusing too much on "ideational content."

There are a variety of pitfalls here. One of them is that most of the people fighting over religion probably didn't to that point by carefully weighing the finer points of theological disputes. Dynamics of community, identity, and ritual probably played a more important role.

I've been thinking about this as we approach election day. American politics scholars understand very well that, for most Americans, partisanship drives ideology. Scholars of ethnic politics see familiar patterns in U.S. political polarization (cc @sstroschein2).

Political movements embrace conversion (!!) narratives as validations of their beliefs, and the converted stress ideas and epiphanies. But it doesn't take much poking around to see the crucial role if identity, belonging, and social affirmation.

Can young trans activists please remember that most of the trans rights attributed to the Equality Act 2010 (specifically employment and vocational eduction) have been in British law far longer than those mere 11 years. These rights stem form a ruling 25 years ago in 1996.

This is IMPORTANT. I’m not just being picky. The narrative against our rights hinges on the suggestion that they are ‘new’ or radical, rather than having been largely settled since before some of the detractors were born. Non-discrimination was formally written into the..

..Sex Discrimination Act by regulations in 1999. The only thing not covered at that time was discrimination in the supply of goods and services, owing to a loophole which Labour decided to rely on. Never these, the 1999 regulations covered almost everything lately in contention..

..because reliably protecting employment rights had to include dealing with issues in sex-specific care and in shared sleeping and changing accommodation for staff who sleep in or change at work. The Equality Act 2010 merely burnished protections that had already existed..

..without issue for 12 years in 2010 by carrying forward everything contained in the amended Sex Discrimination Act and other prime non-discrimination acts. Challenges against trans protection in EA2010 — literally pretending they’re something new — are based on a lie.

Here is a reminder of some of the failings in the past 12 months that have led to so many infections & deaths-

1.The PM missed 5 cobra meetings at start
2. The Government ignored warnings about pandemic preparations
3. They allowed ppe stockpiles to run down (1/10)

4. Delayed lockdown number one
5. Delayed lockdown number two
6.Delayed lockdown number three
7. Ignored Sage advice on a circuit break lockdown for 6 weeks
8.Allowed people to enter the UK without checks
9.Stopped contract tracing in March (2/10)

10. Discharged people into care homes without testing
11.Allowed ppe to be exported
12. Ignored WHO advice to “test test test”
13. Couldn’t track how many people were being tested each day
14.Didn’t require private testing companies to report results to local councils (3/10)

15. Created an app that notification to self isolate from didn’t count for claiming a self isolation payment
16. Recommended face coverings in May but didn’t make it compulsory until July
17.Didn’t join cross Eu ppe procurement (4/10)

18. Handed contact tracing to private companies with no record
19. Handed ppe contracts to companies with no record
20.Failed to support people to self isolate
21.Brought in scheme of support for self isolation that only 1 in 8 people qualify for (5/10)