Finally read the new update on UK variant B.1.1.7, posted yesterday, which includes a study suggesting the variant is no more (or less) severe than prior virus variants.
Just a very brief thread (or read the entire document here:

Researchers took 1769 cases of people infected with the new variant and then looked for 1769 cases of people with “normal” virus to compare them to. They chose these so that median age and proporion of females was the same. That’s why it’s called a “matched cohort study”

They then compared hospitalizations for the two groups:
Overall 42 people were hopsitalized,
16 with the variant
26 with wild-type
The difference between the two was not significant.

Caveat: “Due to potential time delays for receipt of hospital admissions data, the identified hospital admissions should be regarded as a minimum number of hospital admissions and further admissions data are likely to be received into this NHS dataset in the future.”

The researchers also compared fatality rate for those cases where 28 days had elapsed since sample was taken:
12 of 1430 (0.89%) variant cases had died
10 of 1360 (0.73%) wild-type cases had died
Again, the difference was not significant.

Alright, it's time for my @threadapalooza - 100 tweets (if I can limit myself) on:

Judaism Is Not Christianity

2. When I was in Yeshiva, a certain Rabbi once explained the process of studying Chassidus as follows:

"The beginner thinks everything is different. Then he learns more, and thinks everything is the same. Then, he learns more, and finally realizes everything is different."

3. In my opinion, this process is broadly applicable. When we first enter any field, because we understand nothing, there seems to be an infinite variety of ideas. Then we learn, and each level of understanding reduces things to fewer and fewer central principles.

4. The Sophomoric student thinks not that everything is different, but that everything is the same. Only when we move on to actual understanding do we realize there is infinite or near-infinite variety and differences are real, despite or because of shared underlying principle.

The same is true when you learn about Judaism and Christianity. Judaism is not Christianity, and all semblances of similarity are mere semblances.

In fact, the illusion cannot hold under any close scrutiny at all. What follows is intended merely as close scrutiny. /5

feel like adhd is becoming really visible recently which is good! but i’m not seeing any talk of the actual really difficult aspects of having it other than like hehe can’t focus on anything (which is the fucking bane of our lives but it’s the most well-known aspect of it)

emotional dysregulation is one of the worst most destructive symptoms for me to the point it was taking over my life so much i thought i had bipolar/bpd. it’s not just getting sad or having mood swings - for me it’s anger, anger that feels as if it’s eating me from the inside out

hyperfixation sounds cute but when your brain has decided it wants to put you in a state of perpetual inability to engage in your responsibilities it’s no fun at all nor does it constitute a “superpower” that helps me get whatever i’m fixated on done. it’s more like days spent

in bed unable to drag yourself away from youtube videos about tsunamis when you have an assignment due in 2 days and mouldy cups festering on your bedside table. it’s snapping at your partner because they’re trying to stop you hyperfocusing on an argument you’re having with some

random online because your brain won’t let you leave that state (this ties in with the emotional dysregulation part massively too). it’s not being able to stop reading the fanfiction you wrote when you were 14 bc you hoarded it all and your brain decided one day it’d be funny to

It was commonplace experience growing up in Ashraf-majority village to hear slurs like "musalman hai to kia hua, hai to badzaat hi nh". once I heard someone say "jis gaon me Syed hota, us gaon k aas paas koi shaitan nhi aa sakta". But the most flagrant but less obvious ways

Casteism is perpetuated, I have witnessed and continue to, is via religious gatherings-Juma khutba, Milaad, Jalsa etc- where Ashraf Maulvis indulge in direct casteist slurs like "badzaat"(while referring to lower caste muslims) and not so direct like-

Ek "Ahmaq(idiot) dhobi", "Nafarmani Julaha", Bedeeni qasab" etc as part of their anecdotes/quips(Notice here the particular quality of individual is not his quality it represents "caste quality"). And how one Awliya/Buzurg (of course Ashrafs) rescued/saved those Ahmaq/Bedeen...

Here again saviourship is estblshd as "caste quality" of Ashrafs). In Ashraf Maulvis' sermons, casteism peppered anecdotes abound where inferiority of lower caste muslims(badzaat, badmaash, bezaat, Bedeen etc) and corresponding superiority of upper caste muslims(wherein They

would refer certain upper caste individual past or present in grandiose and patronising tone and tiltle eg Auliya, Murshid, ek Buzurg, Sahab-e-qalam etc.)is very skillfully estblshd.This work of normalising casteism in two-way traffic has very real cnsequences. I heard once my

1/ Mitch McConnell wants to let corporations kill you without consequence. (THREAD)

2/ Probably the most under-reported story of the year has been how Mitch McConnell is holding Americans hostage in exchange for letting big corporations kill Americans without any consequence.

3/ Mitch took you and me hostage back in May, when the House of Representatives passed the HEROES act that would have funded state and local governments and provided unemployed workers with an ongoing weekly payment.

4/ Mitch refused to even allow the Senate to discuss the HEROES Act until or unless the legislation also legalized corporations killing their workers and customers. To this day, he refuses to let it even be discussed in the Senate.

5/ We’ve seen companies fire people for refusing to take their lives in their hands, executives organize betting pools on which employees are going to die first, and companies lying openly to their workers and customers about the dangers of COVID-19.

1/ Thread: You are not a lottery ticket

Peter Thiel is a contrarian. In 2013, he spoke in SXSW pushing against the conventional wisdom of luck’s outsized role.

2/ I like Thiel’s ideas not because I fully agree with them, but because he consistently pushes against ideas that seem settled.

Peter showed a simple 2x2 framework to make his case.

Are we optimistic/pessimistic about the future?
Is the future determinate or indeterminate?

3/ Optimists think about the promises of the future whereas pessimists deeply fear the future.

If the future is determinate, you should have strong conviction. If it is not, you should heavily diversify.

4/ In the 50s-60s, Americans not only believed they would be at the forefront of progress but also had big, hairy audacious projects in mind that would materialize the definite future they had in mind.

5/ US, generally speaking, still remains optimistic perhaps by just extrapolating the past, but the future vision seems increasingly unclear.

Japan and Europe probably need no explanation at this point.

Now ministering: Pst Gabriel Oboh
Message Title: Gratitude in Marriage

When a man is grateful to the wife, he will get double from the wife and vice versa. Anytime you're grateful to your spouse your cup overflow.

#ChurchGRA #Gratitude #MyTurnToShine

Gratitude is an appreciation for something one has done for you. (2 Samuel 9:1) Couples expect their spouse to show appreciation for things done. Whenever this isn't forthcoming, there will be a reaction from such a spouse.

#ChurchGRA #Gratitude #MyTurnToShine

In a similar vein, God expects us to express gratitude to Him for all He has done for us. The story of the ten lepers portrays this fact. (Luke 17:11-19)

#ChurchGRA #Gratitude #MyTurnToShine

Whenever you don't show gratitude to your spouse, you are removing something from your spouse. Many times couples focus on things that have not to be done rather than appreciating things that have been done.

#ChurchGRA #Gratitude #MyTurnToShine

How do you show appreciation in marriage?

1. Never trivialize what your spouse has done; no matter how little it may seem, always appreciate their effort.

#ChurchGRA #Gratitude #MyTurnToShine

THREAD: Senate committee on public services holds hearing on cashless modes along tollways https://t.co/sDo55hwVGt

Tweets by our digital producers @YsabelwithaWhyy and Bamba Galang

Senate committee chair Grace Poe: The Toll Regulatory Board can't even do its job of collecting toll fees - ₱44.24 million in 2017 uncollected, ₱859.94 million in 2019 - almost a billion pesos

Sen. Poe: The TRB, like the NDRRMC and PhilHealth, suffers from a governing board dominated by ex-officio cabinet secretaries who have more important things to do. The future of the TRB is another issue that should be resolved in this hearing.

Sen. Poe: The backlash in the cashless toll collecting service reminded of the importance of careful planning.

Valenzuela Mayor Rex Gatchalian is present in the hearing.

Earlier, he suspended NLEX Corp.'s business permit over traffic problems caused by its cashless toll-collecting system. He has since lifted the suspension after coming to an agreement with NLEX.

Peak Oil > The Singularity - A thread
When trying to outline future challenges, a lot of attention is typically given to advanced technology, like blockchain, genetic engineering, wired brain, increased digitalization of the world, and AI, culminating in the Singularity.

While this kind of thinking is important, as our dreams reveal something about ourselves irrespective of the degree of realization, I think there are other possible challenges that may equally or more merit our attention.

The advancement of these technologies depends on our access to cheap energy resources, primarily fossil fuels, which with continued growth (not hindered by f.e. a pandemic) won’t be possible for much longer. I see no answer to Peak Oil.

Peak Oil isn’t the sexiest discourse – interactions of quantities of energy resources, economy, extraction techniques, disinformation – I prefer to get my hands less “dirty”, dealing with something more purely of the mind, but that doesn’t mean peak oil doesn’t merit attention.

What may face us, if Peak Oil thinkers like Michael Ruppert got it right, seems to be something between a chaotic collapse of the globalization and the emergence of political orders based less on fragile, global complexity, and more on geography and ecological limitation.

1/ It’s time to defund the GOP. In yesterday‘s rant, I laid out all the reasons why Democrats should put at the top of their priority list “defunding the Republican Party.“ Here’s a little background, and how to do it. (THREAD)

2/ Back in 1981, the Republican Party decided to defund the Democratic Party. While the Republican party had principally been funded by rich people and big business since the 1920s, the Democrats were largely reliant on the labor unions.

3/ So Ronald Reagan, as part of his “Reagan Revolution,“ figured the best way to destroy the Democratic Party was to destroy America’s unions. His first shot was to destroy Patco, the air traffic controller‘s union, and he did it in less than a week in August, 1981.

4/ He, with Republicans in Congress and conservatives on the Supreme Court than embarked on an eight-year campaign to eliminate unions from the American landscape, thus wiping out the Democratic Party’s ability to win elections.

5/ It worked, and by 1992 American union membership, and their ability to fund elections, had collapsed so severely that Bill Clinton and the Democratic Party had to take money from giant corporations and billionaires to prevail in that election year.

Defining The Massacres In North West Nigeria

[THREAD]

Since 2014, several communities in some of the states in the Northwest of Nigeria have witnessed aggravated plunder and killings. Nigerians and non-Nigerians have been massacred in unrestrained orgy within these locations.

From Kaduna to Sokoto, Katsina to Zamfara and Kebbi, it has been a cauldron of beastly killings.

In the run-up to the 2015 general elections, Zamfara state became the epicentre of the daily horror. The killings soon spread to Katsina state with some intensity.

Also across the state boundaries, Niger State in the North Central zone witnessed similar attacks.

By 2019, the savagery reached a crescendo with the erstwhile Governor of Zamfara, Abdulaziz Abubakar Yari confessing that he had lost control of the state. What started as rural banditry in which poor farmers lost their flock to rustlers soon attained a frightening scale.

Hey, We need to talk, we really need to talk

We need to talk about moving on so quickly, you carry on residues of unresolved hurt in your heart, we really need to talk

We need to talk about sitting with your emotions in full and dissecting them in little chunks, we need to talk

We need to talk about our intense focus on speed over direction, we need to talk about chasing shiny things at the expense of valuable things in our lives, we need to talk.

We need to talk about silence and counting days and having no plans, and how those are okay things too.

We need to talk about comparison and how it is such a thief of progress, and how you steal from yourself every moment you put yourself down.

We need to talk about our willful blindness to how far we have come, cheating our hearts, one "do they have two heads" after another.

We need to talk about slowing down, about solo conversations in the parking lot, we need to have more of that, where we are truly thankful for where we are and where we are going.

Life is more than just ticking the boxes. There's full love and wholesome friendships to be made.

I hoped that we'd sit with our emotions, and for most of us, not having a schedule can almost come off like a disease, but hey, you are here again. It will be fast soon, so you need to treasure the silence and the solitude of your own voice in your head

You deserve some time off

Once again, I find that @Maarblek is ahead of me in analysis. As he said a while ago: The only goal the left has now or has ever had is the liquidation of the kulaks (small property owners). This makes sense of the class alignments we see, and the left’s historic failures.

It’s a funny thing that two classes of people tend to join the left: The managerial class, and the lumpenproletariat. In modern terms: tech/educated class + the perpetually precariously employed / job hopper. What do they have in common? They would seem to be class enemies.

What they share is a hatred of the small property owners. On the part of the lumpen, these are often the people he collects a paycheck from (sure, some of them shitty). The lumpen doesn’t work for the elites directly because they demand high education and contract out low skills.

On the part of the managerial class and the elites, however, the small property owner becomes a target when growth in other areas is stalled. That market share is a potential avenue for firm growth once other options for expansion are foreclosed.

The managers promise the lumpens that if they help them overthrow the small owners and consolidate power in mega-firms, the managers will give the lumpens goodies (a small UBI, whatever). The Soviets made the same promise. And perhaps it holds—briefly.

CHINA.🇨🇳

A 2019 document leaked from D&C Think, a think tank based in Beijing, reveals *A LOT* about the U.S. Governors that China considers to be *FRIENDLY* towards the Chinese Communist Party.

The Chinese source is below. It is *revealing.*