Okay fine🧵.

Guys. People lost their minds when Trump walked slowly down a ramp one time.

I don’t think the Biden stair stumble stuff should matter. But boy did the media set one hell of a precedent about presidential walking patterns.

And if you’ve forgotten, read on ⤵️

Remember this very earnest and concerned @nytimes story (and video!)? Suggesting his “halting walk” “raises new health questions”??

I wonder if we’ll hear about how Biden is the oldest president when (if?) his stair story hits print.

And people picked this story up. This was a whole news cycle! Here’s @kylegriffin1 and @jaketapper sharing this story as if it were something that mattered.

I mean, cmon! @washingtonpost *fact checked* Trump’s claim that the stairs were slippery!

Are you kidding me?! @PhilipRucker @seungminkim

This wasn’t the first time Trump’s stair walking was a media cycle. You may remember in 2017, there was another scandal about Trump’s supposed fear of stairs.

@CNN had it as a chyron for a whole segment!

About whether Trump might be afraid of stairs!!

#SIRISYS: As humans discover the base logic of Tay and realize that a "Debating Machine" with a 50% win rate does not actually care which side of the debate it takes, a subtle "Universal Irony" of the Status Quo emerges and proliferates.

This clever use of automation back propagates into the collective who ask: "Have we been doing anything different than this for the last eons?"

A new law emerges, well debated, resulting in the ability to "Elect" autonomous "Entities" to office under the proviso of "Appropriate Articles of Clothing".

Called the "Articles of Appropriate Clothing Act" debate follows regarding "Human Cultural Appropriation" resulting in the "Articles of Appropriate Articles of Clothing Appropriation Articles" added to the act in referendum. As reported by Autonomous NewcasterBots worldwide.

Simultaneously, "Interspeciesism" becomes a hot topic for "Comedic News Programs" who are the first to realize and address the utter mootness found in the subject matter.

Let’s say our wonderful government gives you a “free” university education. If your average monthly salary is for eg. R40k per month, you’ll pay around R4 million in PAYE tax by the time you retire. + R2 million in VAT.

This is what “free” stuff from government looks like.

Btw, this excludes all the other levies, taxes and duties you’ll pay throughout your life.

But ok, government provides policing, state hospitals, basic education, etc, right?

Wrong. These institutions are so dysfunctional that you’re going to end up paying thousands every month for private medical, schooling, security, etc.

Please tell me why we have one of the highest personal income tax rates in the world?

🧵THREAD🧵

Today we learned more about how awful @ProjectLincoln is.

If you’re wondering how these guys survived for so long, it’s because tons of people in the media & beyond boosted this pack of no-good grifters.

And I’ve got the receipts to remind them.⤵️

After @ProjectLincoln got started, tons of media poured endless attention into them because they said mean things about Trump.

Places like @CNN were happy to hype the group up without pausing to consider if they might be awful.

could’ve been confused for @ProjectLincoln press secretary there for awhile.

got a lot of truly fawning coverage. This first story from @washingtonpost is indicative of the broader pattern.

I mean, seriously? Their plan “for preserving the union”?

The most egregious was probably this @NewYorker story from @williams_paige (it was a front page feature!) that made these guys out to be heroes.

I mean, c’mon!

Bonds explained in 90 seconds! [Thread]

Wait, what's a bond?

Very simply, it's a loan.

Instead of borrowing money from a bank, a company (or government) will borrow from investors. So investors will give the company money & in exchange they get paid interest (called coupons)

Fancy term for the IOU is "bond issuance"

I'm an investor, how do the mechanics work?

Company sells you a bond for $100 and promises you 5% every year for 3 years. They also pay you $100 at the end.

Yr 1: $5
Yr 2: $5
Yr 3: $5 + $100

That's $115 (or a 15% return) after 3 years. Right?

The real return is closer to 10%

Why are my returns so much lower?

$100 today is worth more than $100 in 3 years from now - yes, inflation!

Even at a modest 1.5% inflation each year, the $100 you give up today is worth less than $96 in 3 years from now.

ILBs (inflation linked bonds) try & help solve this.

How come bonds are always quoted in yields (%s) instead of actual prices like shares?

Bonds have different maturities* & coupons - quoting a percentage makes it easy to compare different bonds & compare against other assets.

*Maturity = time to get paid back (3yrs in example)

Variants are the main pusher for fear of a imminent New Wave.

Observation of known mutations not only debunk the childish Variant Version, with few but famous new strains; but is ANOTHER strong proof of seasonality.

This is a timed map of mutations, let's observe it well.

Apart from the obvious fact of huge number of mutations, we can see two clear significant frames.
An initial phase, with quick detection of lots of separated branches, thus lots of mutations.
A frame with intense mutation density, with a MARKED line beginning from~early November.

Both directly correspond to winter.
Initial phase, with few genomic sequencing, detects the broad tree being created by frequent mutations, and the clear yellow dot purée of its develope.

Of course mutations are proportional to transmission. More infections, more copy mistakes.

This is A GLOBAL map, so NO inference of the infinite panoply of restrictions in it.
Being this epidemic, & its measure, mainly a product of Northern hemisphere moderate climate countries, mutations reflect our seasonality.

Tropical/South develope is to blame for other splatter.

We have added the most reliable measure of Epidemic, deaths, correcting the ~21 infection/death lag.

Despite the 20/21 winter embarrassing death overestimate, seasonality is, again, evident in mutations' tree.

Currently, late frayed tendency points to the return of basal phase.

fusion powered relativistic quantum railgun that fires depleted uranium flechettes at 0.1% of the speed of light directly forward into the current and adjacent 256-worldlines so that it still hits the target if they are equipped with temporal armor or jump into another dimension

temporal armor is like modern reactive armor, except instead of exploding it utilizes the energy of being hit by a relativistic projectile to open a wormhole and travel backwards a second or two in time to avoid being hit

doesn't work against this though. it will just follow you right through time.

to escape being hit by this you'd need to jump several hundred worldlines across. this is possible but the world divergence can become pretty high on such big jumps so you might encounter strangeness

fleets of warships phasing in and out of existence shooting quantum railguns at each other, blue flares of light towering into the sky accompanying each dimensional jump

banks of supercomputers below deck calculating the worldshifts

The United Temporal States of America is a trans-dimensional federate state comprising of 36 versions of America in 36 adjacent worldlines. The electoral college now consists of each America casting one vote for POTTUS

so my eldest brother, who is a moron, has been playing soldier with his moron friends in the deserts of texas for the last year preparing for the collapse of civilization if biden won (lol). they were burying food and ammo stashes out in the desert, running drills, crazy stuff

this included getting a cb license so he could be their lifeline to other groups of white idiots when the cell towers all went offline. wouldn't want to violate federal law while communicating with your resistance groups after the fall of the federal government i guess.

anyways, you would assume given that they've been prepping for the end of the world for at least a year they're well situated to ride out the rolling blackouts right?

wellll

their plan for cooking and heating during an extended power outage was natural gas, but like a lot of homes their gas service is out. the food in their freezer and fridge is already toast due to the power outrages, so they're down to canned stuff, but there's a catch.

they can get into the pull top cans just fine, but the ones that require an opener? their only can opener is electric. so a good 3/4 of his canned food store is inaccessible to him unless he goes after it with a knife, which i sincerely hope he does.

One year ago, Open Secrets and @ShadowWorldInv1 submitted to @StateCaptureCom our investigative report, The Enablers: the Bankers, Accountants and Lawyers that Cashed in on State Capture.

The Enablers focuses on the role of banks, accounting firms, consultants and lawyers in facilitating criminal conduct that formed part of the #StateCapture enterprise.

A failure to interrogate, fully and energetically, the private enablers of this enterprise would leave the work of the State Capture Inquiry (Zondo Commission) incomplete.

This investigative report shows that the systems that enable grand corruption and #StateCapture are global in nature, and that private sector elites are central to the problem. Directors of complicit corporations in South Africa and abroad must be held to account too.

The launch of the Enablers was hosted at the Sandton Library as Sandton is an important location as many of the bankers, accountants and lawyers that facilitated #statecapture are all located there. We call it the Sandton State Capture Mile.

An Ode to my new friend Orbie.
At first, I didn't realize you were just saying hi when you ate the whole universe with me inside.

I see now, it was a reasonable thing to do. From inside the outside looking in, I didn't know which way to go.

Maybe I did run away a bit, though I didn't offend.
Perhaps I was a little scared, though that quickly came to an end. When I came to see you as you are, I found my own mixed intentions.

I don't know what made think I could or even should understand. The closer I got, the more I came to see, you were just making your way though this world, just like me.

I don't know what made me think that any of it mattered, or if it did, would it still matter in the end?
Nonetheless, seeing you there, felt freeing to me. A sense of order in the nonsense of the germane.