Just listened to the latest episode of @DWTWR, about Aliens of London, partly because @sjcAustenite and @KyleDAnderson are funny and insightful critics, but mostly to hear my monthly name-check.

But I think the satire in this story lands better than they give it credit for. 1/

At one point, Erik raises and dismisses the possibility that Russell might want to say that inside all our politicians are evil monsters bent on destroying us — but I think that’s absolutely what Russell wants to say. Here’s why. 2/

Russell really hates Tony Blair. He is found dead in a cupboard early on in Aliens of London, and he will return in a new form as Harold Saxon in the finale of Season 3. Russell will kill the current or former British PM (or President) literally every year during his era. 3/

(He will also kill the PM in the form of Boris Johnson in Revenge of the Nestene, the story he wrote to accompany the lockdown rewatch of Rose in March 2020.) 4/

In 1997, Blair’s Labour promised a “third way” between capitalism and socialism. This seemed new and exciting, but was basically just a shift to the right, to accommodate the sort of neoliberalism that kept getting Margaret Thatcher elected. 5/

Some initial thoughts on the disability discrimination section of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission Report. First, more work is needed to seek out & respect the views of disabled people themselves, and especially those who experienced these settings firsthand.

The report does not focus in depth on many settings in which disabled people were detained (e.g. psychiatric hospitals, residential disability institutions), so it’s clearly not a full picture of the human rights violations experienced by disabled people on this issue.

The report shows the flow of disabled people between mother and baby homes, psychiatric hospitals, county homes, Magdalene laundries & specialist disability services. This deserves more attention - who was responsible for admission/discharge decisions? What criteria did they use?

On the issue of consent of disabled mothers to place their children for adoption – the report shows that often, where disabled mothers made the ‘right’, socially acceptable choice; that is, to place the child for adoption, then they were often deemed to have capacity to decide.

When disabled mothers resisted the adoption of their children, and were perceived to be making the ‘wrong’ decision, many were found to lack capacity to decide. Critical analysis of the subjective, value-laden nature of these capacity assessments is missing from the report.

A lot of the conversation revolves around Nazis & yes, let’s hate Nazis. But that’s easy. More people need to focus on loving, supporting, & standing up for Jewish people. Antisemitic people aren’t only out-in-the-open white supremacists. Antisemitism is everywhere. 1/10

Punching Nazis, again, great-they’re trash that deserve a good throat punch -but it does nothing to solve the problem of antisemitism. Start by looking at yourself and understand the ways in which you, yes you, perpetuate antisemitic stereotypes. 2/10

Stand up for us when you hear other people perpetuating those stereotypes. Do more than just say “oh, sad” every time a synagogue or Jewish cemetery is vandalized (which is often). 3/10

Educate yourself. Regurgitating that 6m Jews were murdered during the Holocaust isn’t enough. How did it get to that point? They didn’t just start killing Jews. Years of propaganda & scapegoating- by the time Jews were dragged from their homes, their neighbors didn’t care. 4/10

Do you know anything else about the history of the Jewish people? That the Black Plague was blamed on Jews? A conspiracy that Jews were poisoning the wells? They burnt Jews alive. Jews always required to live in their own areas (Jewish Ghettos) throughout European history. 5/10

thread/

tomorrow is holocaust memorial day. it’s not the jewish day of commemoration. that is later on in the year. it is a day for the non-jewish world to consider the memory of the holocaust and what it means to them.

i’m wondering a lot lately about what the holocaust means to non-jews, considering how much it’s been divorced and decontextualized from jewish storytelling.

from where i’m standing the non-jewish world fetishises the holocaust to use it as a metaphor for bad things; things that don’t need a holocaust comparison in order to be understood as bad.

it makes me sick. why? the holocaust is in recent memory for jews. it is a horror that disproportionately affected jews. it is a historic atrocity that attempted to end jewish life on earth, and it took far too many jewish lives to bear thinking about. we have to think about it.

if we don’t think about it, we let those souls perish forever and we let go of the duty we have to ensure ‘never again’.

What if too much empathy leads to bad decisions?

Is being too empathic holding you back as a leader?

///THREAD///

Empathy is the ability to feel what other people are feeling, and it is seen as one of the most essential leadership skills

Empathy indeed helps you see from the perspective of others and helps build stronger relationships

And all leaders need an element of this...

However,

Some psychologists estimate that one in five business leaders have such low empathy they can be considered psychopaths

We have all worked for one or at least worked in an organization that sees you as employee #2658, not an individual

All numbers

No heart...

Now I know you are not one of the psychopaths

You are like the vast majority of leaders

You have a big heart, and you want to do the right thing

But let's look at a typical example...

You have a team member

They've been with you years, your team loves them, and you can't imagine work without them

However, they're failing with the new demands of their role

People are starting to notice, some complaining to you

Results are being effected...

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.

1/13 One quarter of young academics have been bullied. I am one of them. I am sharing this letter and chain of tweets to ensure future student and staff safety. I wish I didn’t have to.

My statement https://t.co/jRooscrLhx

@AcademicChatter #PhDChat @ThesisWhisperer

2/13 I experienced and witnessed years of bullying and harassment by Professor James E.M. Watson (@cyclonewatson) at the University of Queensland and on Wildlife Conservation Society projects he supervised

@TheWCS @UQ_News @UQ_CBCS @UQ_SEES @fairwork_gov_au @arc_gov_au

3/13 The bullying had detrimental impacts on the health and wellbeing of myself and other victims. The bullying was serious enough to cause me anxiety and complex trauma, a form of PTSD. This was confirmed by independent #mentalhealth professionals.

4/13 My story highlights a deep bullying issue in academia. The system lacks transparency and doesn’t account for power imbalances. Silence is not neutral. It is complicit with a culture of secrecy and fear conducive to bullying. We must change the system and speak out

5/13 I am going public as a last resort. For the last year I have been unable to make progress through formal complaint channels. I don’t believe UQ has done enough to protect former, current and future staff and students. So I want to set the record straight.

In order to maintain a largely peaceful society, rebuild our faith in our government, and form a more perfect union, I would like to propose a peace deal fair to all Americans.

President: @TulsiGabbard

Vice President: @RandPaul

[1/x] Happy to announce the publication of “RETROFIT DECARBONIZATION of COAL POWER” (open access https://t.co/JxrMtLS9gf, @energies_mdpi). A riveting 39-page article (+ 44p S.I.), obviously makes for excellent holiday/wknd reading :) Here's an attempt at a tweet-summary-thread!

[2/x] Out of ~2 TWe of coal power plant capacity, more than half is less than 14 years old. Can this infrastructure play a role in decarbonized power systems or must it all be stranded? We try to look at ALL options in this work, supported by @EnvDefenseEuro & Rodel Foundation.

[3/x] Capacity-averaged age of all coal power in operation today is ~18 years. Committed emissions from existing and under-construction coal power is ~300 GTCO2-eq (294 is our central estimate, IEA say ~328). Each new 1 GW-plant commits to ~0.2 GT additionally.

[4/x] We define the term RETROFIT DECARBONIZATION to include _anything_ done to keep existing some coal plant equipment in operation (>5 % of org. plant capex), approx. maintaining its function (>50 % of org. annual generation) while eliminating emissions (<50 gCO2-eq/kWh).

[5/x] Many retrofit options were assessed (some shown here). Emissions reqs. put tough pressure on biomass & CCS. Putting wind & solar at former coal sites is a great idea, but power dens. diff. mean they don't qualify as retrofit decarb. What really works? Geothermal & Nuclear!

For 2021 I'd like it if we stopped accusing people of racism for saying a Black person is articulate

For 2021 I'd like everyone to admit peas, outside of their delicious pod, are disgusting and not food.

For 2021 I'd like everyone to admit that the Patriots are the cheatingest franchise in the history of all pro sports and probably had Putin hack their opponents.

For 2021 I'd like it if everyone admitted REO Speedwagon and Journey are the same terrible band invented as a sick joke to annoy me

For 2021 I Really Can't Wait to go see live music but I guess imma have to wait though

Today's front page features our story on the loosely connected, QAnon-believing network of 'patriots' that spent weeks organizing and crowd-sourcing money for mass action at the Capitol on Jan. 6: https://t.co/Kc1BL9JqFv w/ @ddknyt @mmcintire

Keith Lee, an Air Force veteran, was one of the far-right, low-budget agitators trying to 'Stop the Steal'. More than an hour before Trump's speech: “If you died today and you went to heaven, can you look George Washington in the face and say that you’ve fought for this country?”

Weekend Musings

Step by step guide on how to prove via SM photographs that you have embraced Class and crawled out of your Indian middle class origins and are ready to look down upon fellow Indians with that high society subtle and pretentious scoff and ‘OMG’!

Let’s go -

1. ‘The book I’m reading’ photograph isn’t about the book. It should have a frappe, cappuccino, anychino..basically any Barista level fancy stuff. Coz honestly neither you nor your friends understand or use French press or Colombian beans. An eatable, casually thrown around, but

make sure the label is visible. And it HAS to be some foreign brand of cookies, cheese, cake you picked up at your last Khan market visit and we’re saving for this photograph. Try Scandinavian brands. No one understands what’s written and everyone will assume it’s really fancy.

And all this should cover not more than 30-40% of space in your photograph. Rest should be of the ‘view’ of the localé which ‘ OMG I wasn’t even aiming at but it just came in picture’ kinda stuff. An opportunity to show your house, garden, hotel etc. Make sure the beverage is

in a big cup. Never China. That’s Middle class. Go for those heavy stone/ Earth shade ones that prove how you always prefer staying connected to ground but everyone know they are pretty costly at those fancy stores. You can also buy them from road side vendors and fool everyone.

all the boy cousins split off to talk about romances and personal growth since the last family reunion. the girl cousins go down to the creek to smoke cigarettes and throw knives

our conversation inevitably turns to the dark and mysterious world of the girl cousins. “why do they smoke those things? they smell so nasty!” teddy cried. “i saw a pack of birth control pills sitting out on lisa’s desk,” ronald said somberly.

quickly a consensus is reached that we need to find out exactly what the girls are talking about. gerald and i volunteer for recon. spying seems dishonorable but we agree bigger things might be at stake. edwin caught tara rolling her eyes at the Sunday school teacher.

we slip down to the creek by a trail cut by a jack rabbit. as we sneak, sly and quiet as foxes, the sense of boyish mischief departs and an oppressive feeling sets upon us instead. the thicket grows darker and the shadows twist the wrong way. we look at one another very coldly.

coming to a bank looking over the sand bar we see the girls sitting cross legged in a circle darkly painted on the sand. one girl sits in the middle but her face is covered by a kind of mask. a deer’s head. fat black flies buzz around her and her chest is painted sticky red.

[THREAD]

(TW; Sexual Abuse; Rapist)

I was very recently forwarded a news article concerning a person who has been convicted of various sexual offences against children, and it has came to my attention that this individual may have been targeting the #ActuallyAutistic community

The person’s name is Tom Graham. He used a couple of different Twitter account names, but the most common was this one, @serverusautismo

In December 2020, Thomas Graham was returned to prison after breaching a Sexual Offences Prevention Order, (SOPO). He was in prison after being convicted of rape in 2011, and previously was jailed in 2003 for taking and distributing indecent images.

When he was on Twitter, Graham frequently tried to ascertain the ages of individuals on Twitter, and given what has come to light, this is now extremely worrying as I believe he was searching for individuals to groom.

I believe he specifically targeted Autistic People because he believed we were more vulnerable to his advances for a variety of reasons.

Kicking off the afternoon session of the #RewildingSymposium is @JCSvenning talking about 'restoring the role of megafauna in European ecosystems'

He begins by highlighting that current megafauna is unusually poor. Last at this level >30 million years ago. Historically, super diverse megafauna was the norm.

He points out that most current species are 100,000 to >1m years old. Meaning they have a complex evolutionary background with the landscape and complex ecological characteristics

The presence of megafauna promotes biodiversity and provide crucial ecosystem services and trophic effects through, predation, seed dispersal, grazing, browsing, carbon diversification and non-trophic disturbance. Promoting heterogeneity both vegetation and abiotic

The absence of large herbivores is also threatening species depended on open and semi open habitats in Europe. Including species which are specifically adapted to megafauna effects. Europe has a far lower levels of herbivore biomass compared to what would be considered normal