What if you could buy a Small Business with no debt or capital?

Here I'll detail the unusual buyout structure I used:

1/20. Democracy is precious and exceptional.

2/20. Democracy is undone from within rather than from without.

3/20. The occasion to undo democracy is often an election.

4/20. The mechanism to undo democracy is usually a fake emergency, a claim that internal enemies have done something outrageous.

5/20. A tyrant cares about his person, not the Republic.

Dear fellow musicians, performers, technicians etc. Here’s a thread about how our lives are going to change re touring/working in the EU in 50 days time. Think of it as a kind of Bad News Advent calendar. Here goes 1/

First things first, you’ll need a passport with at least 6 months left on it. And you’ll need full travel/third party/health insurance, since if you get ill or have an accident every penny of your care will have to be paid for 2/

To work or do a gig you’re going to need a work visa, just like you do for the USA. But here’s the thing. Work permits & visas and the conditions attached are a matter not for the EU but for the member states themselves 3/

Yes, every member state controls who comes in and who doesn’t and what the rules will be for work and residency. It’s almost as if the Brexiters have been lying about this ALL ALONG. EU members CONTROL THEIR OWN BORDERS 4/

So you’ll need to get a work permit for every country you’re intending to work or gig in and the rules are often different, as are the rules on eg taxation of that work (eg Spain has a withholding tax, France does not) 5/

I want to tell you a short story about a man named Joshua Abraham Norton. Born in 1818 and a resident of the city of San Francisco, CA. Joshua Norton in 1859, declared himself "Norton I, Emperor of the United States.

In 1819 he sent out a letter to many newspapers, which several of them printed. It read:

> At the peremptory request and desire of a large majority of the citizens of these United States, I, Joshua Norton... declare and proclaim myself Emperor of these United States.

He held no formally recognized powers, he decreed that elected officials assemble at a music hall to "remedy the evil." He wanted to clear Congress and abolish it as it stood for "fraud and corruption prevent a fair and proper expression of the public voice."

He spent time inspecting the streets of San Francisco in an elaborate uniform, given to him by officers of the United States Army. He doted the city, examining the condition of the sidewalks and cable cars and the state of public affairs.

When a man sent his private security guards to arrest him, the citizens were outraged. Scaring editorials were written in the newspapers defending him, proposing he was more defensible than the other men of his time.

The official police issued a formal apology.

Good morning, friends.

So here's a question: How should journalists deal with baseless claims undermining the integrity of the election, given that these claims are cited as the reason that the President is refusing to concede?

A thread: 1/

This moment poses a challenge in terms of avoiding amplifying false claims on the one hand, and reporting on Trump’s failure to concede on the other.

Some background and some guidelines from political scientists and scholars of journalism and democracy:

President Trump has lost both the popular vote and the Electoral College. And yet, the president and many of his Republican allies are refusing to accept the declared outcome of a free and fair election.

However, his refusal to concede should not come as a surprise.

The administration and GOP elites questioned the results before the polls had opened. They falsely claimed that there is significant & widespread voter fraud through illegal mail-in ballots, & had already stated that the election would be illegitimate if the president didn’t win.

📢The New York Times investigated these claims, speaking with election representatives from every state.

The result was consistent and unequivocal: There was no evidence of voter fraud in this election.

This was grabbed from r/greatawakening on Reddit:
"Here's what it looks like when all the pieces are sewn together

It smells like conspiracy and treason. Everyone needs to read this. Slowly, and patiently, because it’s very important......

From 2001 to 2005 there was an ...

Every modern effort to crush free speech begins as a crusade against "disinformation." China's massive Internet censorship apparatus was initially justified as an effort to control the spread of false information, and the Chinese state still describes it that way.

Censors begin by claiming that they only want to control the spread of deliberate falsehoods and push back against propaganda campaigns. They always begin by saying their primary concern is disinformation spread by hostile foreign powers. China constantly says that to this day.

The definition of "disinformation" begins to expand as the censors seek more power. Soon they aren't just going after DELIBERATE falsehoods pushed by malevolent conspiracies - they're suppressing everything from honest mistakes to predictions and "wrong" opinions.

It soon becomes clear that the censorship rules - like all other rules in totalitarian societies - are not applied evenly. The ruling party and its friends are judged much less harshly than dissidents. They get far more latitude to make unfounded statements or outright lies.

The censors move on, suppressing not just "disinformation" or demonstrably false statements, but even completely true statements that lack some vital "context." The censors declare that even pure truth is deceptive when it's not packaged and delivered "correctly."

Tuning into the McCabe hearing.

Lindsey Graham is still boasting that CIA unmasked Hillary long before they unmasked Mike Flynn. He's legit complaining that Hillary ran a campaign and the CIA didn't

Whitehouse now explaining to Lindsey Graham that tying an opponent to a foreign country is not a criminal act. "If you look at CI investigation, obvious difference is that there were contacts bt RU intel operatives and campaign operatives."

"I don't think the FBI has any business interfering into that kind of campaign debate, you would be besides yourself with anger if FBI investigated Trump for trying to tie Biden to China."

Now Graham is talking about how Coffee Boy said working with Russia would be treason which 1) means that he thinks Roger Stone committed treason and 2) he demonstrably lied in that interview.

Now Lindsey claiming that the dossier created the impression that Trump was in bed with Russia, and not his open requests for Russian help.

In 1637, the Dutch Republic erupted into a speculative fever over an unlikely item...the tulip.

Tulip Mania has become a legend synonymous with market euphoria and bubbles. But is this tale all it's cracked up to be?

Who's up for a story?

👇👇👇

1/ The tulip is a spring-blooming flower native to the valleys of the Tien Shan Mountains in Central Asia.

It is believed to have been introduced to Europe in 1554, when an ambassador of the Holy Roman Emperor sent tulip bulbs and seeds to Vienna from the Ottoman Empire.

2/ Tulips gained in popularity as people were attracted to their rich color and ability to grow in sub-optimal conditions.

They soon became a coveted status symbol for the wealthy.

The Semper Augustus, with its colorful, flame-like streaks, was the most desired of them all.

3/ By the early 1600s, the Dutch Republic was entering a golden age.

Many financial innovations popped up during this time - the first stock exchange, for example.

But it was another financial innovation that would propel tulips into historical lore: the futures contract.

4/ As tulips grow slowly and may take several years to bloom, paper contracts were written that entitled the buyer to the future tulips.

These contracts were freely-traded.

So in addition to the physical market for tulip bulbs, a thriving paper market was established.

This is a more wonky thread about how I made this visualization in #Rstats using the awesome visNetwork

First step is to create the underlying network data. We need one file of "nodes" - i.e. the people and organizations. And one file of "edges" - i.e. the connections between them.

I created these by hand, based on excellent investigate journalism:

Now we can pull these together to create a network visualization!

You'll notice that I included a column for "type" in the nodes file. This allows me to use different icons for people vs firms vs political organizations.

All the icons are taken from @fontawesome. I *think* the visNetwork 📦 currently only works with fontawesome version 4.7, which is a bit limited – e.g. I decided to use a book icon to represent the fringe Evangelical Christian sect "Exclusive Brethren"! 😂

I very much enjoyed getting to use the "incognito" icon to represent all the unknown donors that have funded Tory MP Owen Paterson's overseas jaunts!

Big #Altcoin thread for $ALTS: Where are we at in the cycle, how long do we have, is this #ALTSEASON, what are the relationships like, all of that. $BTC #Bitcoin $ETH $LINK #Altcoins

First: What is #Altseason? The true altszn was seen in 2017/2018, where $BTC fell off a cliff and $ALTS were the 'safe haven' from btc dumping. ALTS went literally 1000%+ (many much higher). Since that time we have seen many #Altcoin pumps, starting primarily in late Q4 each year

These Altcoin pumps are usually 20-1000% gains on nearly the ENTIRE #Altcoin market. This is awesome to see and genius season- you can't lose. Dips are bought up quickly and both ALT/USD and ALT/BTC pairs pump HUGE. Are we currently in that environment? I'm not quite sure tbh.

I think that $BTC still has a little more gas in the tank, which would result in ALT/BTC pairs suffering IMO. You can see more of my thoughts on #Bitcoin below, but I think that we could see 1 more shakeout + then we could see a big run starting in December 2020 for $ALTS

As an #Altcoin trader, you need to understand several things for the environment in which to trade $ALTS successfully:
- $BTC PA
- $BTC.D
-Seasonality
- $ETH
- and much more

On Bayesianism, the Many Worlds Interpretation, and personal identity.

Some thoughts worked out in a letter to a friend, which is the kind of thing you do when off Twitter for a glorious week. (🧵)

“Chance is ignorance”—the Bayesian story; all probabilities represent states of mind, not states of the world. One *could* put (some) chances “in the world”, but let’s take Occam’s Razor seriously...

That the probability of a fair coin coming up heads is 50% simply means that marginalizing (tracing, as the physicists say) over the hidden facts leaves you, nearly, maximally ignorant of the outcome.

Quantum uncertainty (access below!) poses an apparent challenge to this story. There seems to be nothing to be ignorant about when it comes to (say) electron spin—there is nothing “inside” the

The electron is a simple object, in other words. So where does the uncertainty come from? One could follow David Wallace’s wonderful interpretation in terms of chaotic dynamics and decoherence, but let’s see if we can take another route...

This is what this means to me: as most of you know, I am British, and always will be. But, in February 2017, we became US citizens, after nearly 18 years here. For me it was bittersweet, I just could not get into it, it all felt wrong; I felt I was selling part of my soul. 1/6

When we came out after the ceremony, there was a cardboard cut-out of President Obama and Michelle Obama by the Democratic party booth, and I had my photo taken next to them as I registered to vote. 2/6

For the next 3.9 years I watched this country get suffocated by a president with no interest in the common good: dividing us all; inciting hate against anyone white, straight and able; totally disregarding science. Literally he assaulted every single one of my values. 3/6

And it really and deeply affected me. And I don't think I realised. But I believed that we could all work together to turn it around. That is why I got so involved with the election, as you've all seen on my timeline over the past few weeks, because everything was at stake. 4/6

Today, 7th November 2020, I now feel proud to be a US citizen, proud to have a president who will do his best to unite the people and heal us, allow us to move forward and make progress in solving many vital issues such as social & racial justice & climate change. 5/6

There are already calls for "forgiveness" and "healing" and "reaching out" now that Joe Biden is elected.

I understand the impulse behind these statements, but they are FUNDAMENTALLY immoral

Thread

The best version of the argument is something like this:

America is a divided country, and pursuing the politics of division will only exacerbate the existing split. It is necessary to model a more inclusive politics that celebrates differences.

The assumption is that SOMEONE needs to lower their weapon, and it might as well be the party that campaigned on tolerance. By demonstrating this better way, conservatives will give up their resentment of the left, and return to focusing on shared values rather than partisanship

One problem with this argument is that it is plainly wrong. America ALREADY TRIED THIS. A Democratic president with a legislative supermajority tried to demonstrate magnanimity. The Republicans REJECTED it, demonized it, and used the opportunity to DEEPEN the partisan divide.

That isn't the part that makes it IMMORAL. That is just what makes it EVIDENTLY STUPID as a strategy for national harmony. It didn't work pre-Trump, there's no substantive difference that would make it work post-Trump.

I have other work to do at the moment so I have not finished this but here's a peak at my break down of #AmberHeardIsAnAbuser's claims against #JohnnyDepp #JusticeForJohhnyDepp and the evidence that proves they are FALSE.

Example B: The Painting Incident.

Buckle up this is a long and bumpy ride...

Hang in there...

Wait for it....

Have you forgotten the cause of "The Painting Incident" ???