A thank you to Twitter for teaching me a trans man the truth about transgenderism. I’m no longer lost!

A thread for the headships at Twitter:

What transgenderism is and what it is NOT - What I learned as a Twitter 👩‍🎓 graduate thread.

1.Abigail Shrier & JK Rowling are leaders of a world wide cult that believes woman are equal to men and must be stopped @AbigailShrier

2.I am a real man, bio is wrong; I gave birth through my penis hole that I was led to believe by evangelicals was my vaginaWICKED Christians

3.Just because I transitioned doesn’t mean I know more than a 6 year old & I should be ashamed & embarrassed to believe I know more than people or children who have never been through or witnessed or dealt with medical transition

4.Gender Dysphoria is NOT a mental illness & should never be challenged & medical transition should be administered at, “Mom/Dad I feel like a..” IMMEDIATELY NO QUESTIONS ASKED

5.Children know more than adults & understand consequences without having to go through situations, educational purposes, or have a fully developed brain for hindsight - it’s quite amazing.

My friend @itsafronomics wanted to know the breakdown of student debt by income, so I pulled data from the SCF.

Student debt is more concentrated amongst high earners, but disproportionately amongst Black borrowers. The plot below plots the average within Income Quartiles.
1/n

But those are the averages. What's the share that's above 10k? (This is the Biden current cutoff for debt forgiveness, so a useful benchmark).

For comparison, 20% of white Americans have student debt, and 31% of Black Americans.

Let's contrast that with say, above 20k. I was surprised at how high the share remains.

When we get to 50k of student debt, or more, we see it's only about 5% of the US, and around 8% of Black Americans. Strikingly, it's a huge share of high income Black Americans (this is a known fact in the education literature, I believe).

So what does this look like put together? Overall, we see a higher share of Americans with debt above 10k, and 20k. We would cover a decent amount with 10k, but miss Black Americans especially.

@DawgLaser @GravelInstitute Rush Hudson Limbaugh III (/ˈlɪmbɔː/ LIM-baw; January 12, 1951 – February 17, 2021) was an American radio personality, conservative political commentator, author, and television show host.

We all know no-one should profit from antisemitic hate speech right? Well, tell that to the @JewishChron.

In their media pack they advertise that they've run (at least) one event with Nigel Farage as a speaker. The JC is using their connection with an antisemite to make money.

Important bits first. The media pack has a 2020 calendar so it is probably just over a year old. Which means, all of our examples below bar one had been published when they tried to make money from an event with Nigel Farage. They knew what he had said and didn’t care.

You want one example? Here you go. The JC knew and even called him out on it. So why does their press pack, probably made just months after this and made to get people to advertise with them, show off their link to him?

What kind of advertisers do they want??

For anyone skim reading, let us make this very clear, using words from the Campaign Against Antisemitism. @antisemitism.

Ok, so now the attention-grabbing bits are done, lets dig deeper.

Is Nigel actually an antisemite, Geoffrey hears someone ask in terribly bad faith. Well, lets explore his history of antisemitism through the JC’s own articles!

Warming

* Ecosystems severely damaged at +1C
* Abrupt extinction events from +1.25C
* Planet's liveability at risk by +1.5C
* Global crop failure fears +1.75C
* Impacts we can't adapt to +2C
* Hothouse Earth zone? +2.25C
* Survival is hard before +2.5C

+2.5C likely by 2050-2075

Ocean extinctions:

'The first completely global bleaching event was in 1998. That was a wake-up call for people here in Australia, because that was the first time ever that the Great Barrier Reef had bleached.'

99% of tropical corals will be doomed at

Many already endangered species are now at risk of suddenly becoming extinct as extreme events

'going past 1.5C is dicing with the planet's liveability. And the 1.5C temperature "guard rail" could be exceeded in just 12 years, in 2030.'

Or even in the

'Even if warming was limited to 1.5 K, all major producing countries would still face notable warming-induced yield reduction.'

1.5C looks like it could deliver major crises. Risks to crops appear set to grow immensely from

Pith: Behind the Western Guilt Complex

My take on the courage deficit afflicting us.

One of the defining characteristics of our society is a sense of guilt.

This guilt manifests itself in the way we bend over backwards for marginalised groups, and the way we defend weakness with ferocity.

White guilt, LGBT allies and male feminists abound.

Obesity is championed as body positivity.

People are villainised and ostracised for their lack of feeling for those who struggle. You are a bad person if you are against redistribution.

Our judgement of people's character primarily takes place through this lens.

Empathy, rather than courage, has the moral high ground.

I say this merely as an observation, rather than to dismiss the merits of empathy as a virtue.

I've long wondered why this is, and have been presented with various explanations.

One is colonial and slaver guilt - that we feel ashamed of the horrors we committed as the British Empire and as white slavers in the US.

Another is our culture's roots in Christianity, where the notion of original sin breeds a sense of shame.

THREAD - Who are Urban Naxals?

India Today TV filed an Right to Information (RTI) on 21st Jan 20, with Union Home Ministry seeking to know the official status of "Urban Naxals".

@PMOIndia @HMOIndia @NIA

The questions asked in the RTI application were as follows:

- Who are Urban Naxals? Where are they active?
- How many Urban Naxals have been arrested and how - many of them have been convicted?
- Has the government of India ever tried to ban Urban Naxals? If yes, when?

In response to the RTI query the Left Wing Extremism Division in the home ministry said:

"In so far as the undersigned CPIO is concerned, the information may be treated as Nil." The answer to the query was sent under the signature of Yogesh Mohan Dixit.

The term Urban Naxals is not clearly defined. The origin of the word can be traced to the book and a few essays by film-maker and social media opinion-maker @vivekagnihotri 's book, Urban Naxals: The Making of Buddha in a Traffic Jam.

The phrase of Urban Naxals is loosely attributed to the people with naxalite bent of mind residing in urban areas and working as activists, supporters and protectors of the ideology while the active Naxals battle it out in the jungles and vast swathes of Maoist-dominated areas.

Yesterday I refused unsafe work. This is how it went.

#onted #onpoli #osstf

1st, to the haters. Since when is it "normal" to go to work scared for your health, your life, and your family's lives? It is our right not be scared at work and our employer (in my case, the gov) needs to put measures in place so we aren't afraid. That is law, not just words.

There were 2 steps to the refusal. Refusing to work to my employer, and refusing to work to the Ministry. If my concerns were addressed in Step 1 - to my employer, there is not need to go to the Ministry. We went to the Ministry.

Involved in my refusal were my administration team, a Health and Safety Inspector from my employer, a Health and Safety Inspector from my union, and later in Step 2, a Ministry of Labour Inspector.

I first stated my specific concerns to my adm. They were so supportive in doing everything in their power to address my concerns. I want to thank them for that. They took my concerns seriously. My concerns were all tied to the increased contagiousness of the new variants:

(THREAD) The main problem with that @DanDrezner piece in the Post is that it's an international politics prof writing about the field in which I'm a professor—communications. No one in communications would *ever* compare the blogosphere to either Twitter or Substack. Here's why.

1/ Back in the mid-aughts, I was a Koufax Award-nominated political blogger (I don't know what Drezner was doing then; I first heard of him about a year ago). So I was into the blogosphere pretty deep, as I also ran a second high-traffic blog that was focused on the art world.

2/ The "blogosphere" was an outgrowth of MySpace and LiveJournal, inasmuch as in the heady early days of the internet people suddenly realized that they could engage in private diaristic writing—a very specific subgenre of writing—in the public square, and it was suddenly "okay."

3/ So the blogosphere as such had *nothing* to do with journalism, which needless to say was in a different state just 15 years ago (note: unlike Drezner, I also teach writing and journalism at the university level, so this thread is squarely "in my area," unlike his Post piece).

4/ The blogosphere was a manifestation of the transformation of the public-private binary at the dawn of the internet—and *also* connected to the "creative writing" explosion (what I did a PhD on); in the aughts, creative writing was the fastest-growing discipline *in the world*.

Now, what exactly is an applied epidemiologist, and why are they needed? In the late 90s- early 2000's there were a series of articles in AJPH, AJE, JECH, and IJE dedicated to answering these questions. I'll focus on Stephen Thacker's review.

He states, “The applied epidemiologist is by definition an activist, moving rapidly from findings to policy, putting epi knowledge to good use. The 21st century epi must do all these things while maintaining a foundation of high-quality epi research and practice.”

Susser warns the field of what he considers “the black box paradigm… the current international focus on risk factor epidemiology.” He advocates for expanding our academic training to include socializing epis to “keep the improvement of the public’s health as a primary value”

Morabia argued that epidemiology has historically found its balance in the tension between the search for causal relations and the improvement of public health; overemphasis on either perspective puts epidemiology at risk of losing its value.

How does this play out in real life? I’ve been an applied epi for 13 years, working mainly in local, state, and federal health agencies. My work has focused on conducting cool analysis that lead to policy or systemic change.

Thread: Rush Limbaugh and the conservative Id

On the day of his passing, it's worth doing a brief retrospective on how Rush Limbaugh's personal life almost perfectly paralleled American conservatism...

One thing that's not commonly known about Rush Limbaugh is that he began his career in sports, doing sales for the Kansas City Royals baseball team. That's significant because much of the tribalism and dumbed-down rhetoric in American TV news directly came from sports media.

Television journalism in its earliest days was a fantastic product with real investigative reporting, no filibustering live interviews, and no soundbites. This began changing in the 1970s when ABC Sports president Roone Arledge was put in charge of ABC News.

Limbaugh tried to be a conventional FM deejay but kept getting fired because his personality was too abrasive. After working with the Royals, he began a small political talk show for a Sacremento station. The Reagan repeal of the Fairness Doctrine made his show possible.

Rush Limbaugh's Sacramento show started in 1984 (he replaced Morton Downey Jr) and after 5 years, he was picked up by ABC Radio which was trying to copy some of the sensationalism that ABC News television had started. It was a perfect fit.

For those of us suffering & dying in Texas, the sociopathy of @GOP that leads to an astonishing lack of concern about our lives by evil folk like @GregAbbott_TX @GovernorPerry @TuckerCarlson @DanCrenshawTX et al who blatantly lie about what’s happening...1

...just to score political points - and protect the profits of energy companies - is almost incomprehensible. These are people who would claim Social Security caused 9/11 if it was convenient. What caused this catastrophe is vast vast majority from gas, then coal/nuclear...2

...then wind. The ONLY source of power that is delivering more than expected in budgeting is wind. But that’s not convenient to say for the oil/gas/coal industry, so the @GregAbbott_TX @GovernorPerry @DanCrenshawTX stand atop our dead bodies lying to protect the companies...2

...shockingly, the ONLY people in a position of state/national strength are the executives with the company that manages electricity in the state, @ERCOT_ISO. But they can’t tell the whole truth, because that would entail revealing how much stupidity was done here for profit...3

...of industry by Texas @GOP. If gas/nuke/nuclear/wind had been winterized - as they are everywhere else in the country - this would have largely been prevented. But it would have cost companies money, and that would cut into profits. If the gas lines has been buried deeper...3

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/

A federal judge in DC is holding a detention hearing in the cases of Capitol insurrection defendants Eric Munchel (who was photographed wearing tactical gear and holding a bunch of zip tie handcuffs) and his mother Lisa Eisenhart — the govt is arguing to keep both behind bars

Re: the zip tie handcuffs that Munchel and Eisenhart allegedly picked up inside the Capitol, AUSA Ahmed Baset says they were visible to lots of people passing by at the time but these two not only took them, but did so "with glee"

Baset says it's true that Munchel and Eisenhart aren't charged with physically hurting anyone, the evidence shows they were looking for lawmakers, who had been cleared out. "They should not be given credit for that," Baset argues.

Baset says that Munchel was in touch with the Proud Boys in Tennessee *after* Jan. 6 and talked about how he'd wanted to join their ranks before but didn't know how

Munchel's lawyer Sandra Roland argues that the Tennessee magistrate judge who granted pretrial release to Munchel and Eisenhart got it right in finding that the govt failed to show there were no combination of release conditions that would protect the community

[FACT CHECK]

The @nytimes recently published an article about the Turkish occupation of Afrin, calling it a ‘safe zone’. The article contains several inaccuracies about the situation on the ground, outlined

The Afrin canton has seen virtually no combat during the Syrian Civil War. Religious minorities were protected under the AANES and its predecessors in this overwhelmingly Kurdish region. An estimated 316,000 internally-displaced Syrians - both Kurdish and Arab - fled to Afrin.

The invasion’s raison d'être does not hold up to scrutiny. Turkey accused the PYD/YPG forces in Afrin of launching “more than 700 attacks” against Turkish cities. However, upon further investigation, only 15 confirmed incidents of cross-border attacks from Afrin emerged.

Over half of Afrin’s majority-Kurdish population were forcefully displaced by Turkey’s invasion and prevented from returning. Around 400,000 Syrian Arabs were settled in the region. Currently, Arabs and Turkmen make up around 75% of the population…

...Together with Turkey’s erasure of the Kurdish language and culture in occupied Afrin, this amounts to a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing and a prosecutable crime against humanity.

1/ All I keep thinking about in this moment are all the horrible things that Rush Limbaugh did and said. Just flashes of them.

Like how following Trayvon Martin's death, he tried to convince people it was okay to say "n word" now as long as you ended with an "a" (and said it).

2/ Or how, one of his "undeniable truths" was that "Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of pop culture."

3/ Or how if a prominent woman would publicly defend another woman, he would refer to it as "solidarity of the vaginas."

4/ How he absolutely hated Michelle Obama...and used to refer to has as "moo-chelle." He really liked this because it both attacked her for mooching off system as he claimed and because it was his way of calling her a cow (he thought she was fat).

5/ He had this one song called "Barack the Magic Negro." The lyrics were even more racist than the name. And he played it all the time. He was still playing that song during his show a few months ago.

Here are some of the big investors that track:

Altarock Partners
AKO Capital
Appaloosa
Akre Capital
Broad Run
Dorsey Asset
Duquense
Ensemble
Fundsmith
Polen Capital
Third Point

Here are their current top 10 holdings (in order) and links to their latest buys/sells ⬇️

Altarock Partners

Top

AKO Capital

Top 10 (in

Appaloosa: (David Tepper)

Top

Broad Run

Top