1/11 TO ZANEF

let me be as very frank as possible. If you do not reign in @Sophie_Mokoena who has committed to spitting venomous fake news on Zim & leadership, then forget that this letter will have any consequence on my conscience. The @SABCNews through it's @Sophie_Mokoena

2: has instigated global hatred on Zim & her pple in SA thru spreading naked fake news typical of vendetta journalism bt u never called her out. If yu defend her when she is called to order & to stop publishing unverified falsehoods, then u hv no moral ground to do so on me.

3: @Sophie_Mokoena & @peterndoro masterminded the conspiracy to agenda Zim through a blackmailing campaign dubbed the #zimbabweanlivesmatter which was co-sponsored by fake news peddlers politicians in the @mdczimbabwe & cared not verify them from authorities.

4:It is disturbing to see the @SABCNews importing videos from other juridictions & presenting them as ongoing violence in Zim, presenting Zim like a typical Hobbesian state of nature society of an all against all? That I shall challenge with much vigour as director or myself

5: Each time I have received a call from @Sophie_Mokoena after I post my reservations she has alluded to forces above her whch she has not dared to share w u. Recently she made false alarms abt Beitbridge Border presenting a fake situation as if those who were there were homeless

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My New Years resolution is to provide more actual useful info was thinking maybe it would be shitpost less but I don’t like setting up for failure so here’s a thread on how I think about supply / demand imbalances over cycles thus far I’ve lived

1. Bitcoin is an extremely unique asset in that supply cannot react to demand in any meaningful capacity, miners can add hashrate and mine albeit slowly faster but it’s not enough to drive material supply side changes

2. This differs from a lot of commodities say oil or silver or gold or leggos as people want more of these and prices go up producers produce more they feed the ducks

3. Altcoins imo have largely been a market force driven by this issue though a lot of get rich quick and some actual innovation sprinkled but I think this is why the asset class has grown horizontally at its core

4. Either way you have periods where demand clearly crushes supply often halving related but nonetheless fucking up the imbalance and the momentum does the rest

I'd like to briefly discuss something I think is really important. Possibly the most important thing to consider this new year. When I worked in law I was taught to research and analyze all info & possibilities/arguments. We were taught to remove our emotions from this process..

The reason we were taught not to become too emotionally invested in a particular client or case was because it creates a situation in which you can be blindsided and/or manipulated. It can cause you to miss important information or facts that your client didn't want you to see...

This can then in turn implode your entire case & can damage the firm and/or attorneys reputation & credibility. In law, your reputation/credibility is everything. We were taught to remove emotion from the fact finding due diligence process. We were taught to seek out counter

Evidence; we were taught to analyze a case or legal argument from all sides and perspectives. We were taught how to understand the other side & attorneys argument. This is a vigorous process of picking apart your theory, trying to poke holes in it, questioning your own clients

Story, trying to independently validate or disprove it. This is so when you take the case to trial, you are prepared for everything and all possibilities. You must know the other sides legal theory/argument better than they do. You must have a solid foundation of prior case law..

Lunch break chart dump for final 2020 regular season numbers

Sheesh Packers/Bills

Rodgers finishes with a big lead over everyone

Which teams were best at avoiding rush attempts in the worst time to rush? (2nd & long)

NGS and @nflfastR CPOE finished pretty similar

1) *IMPORTANT LINK AT END OF THIS THREAD*
(and no, I've never posted a tweet like this before.)

What times we are in. And how few understand or grasp the utter profundity of the moment.

2) Yet despite how it's looking from this current perspective, and after some turbulent months ahead (likely an understatement), the dawning of a true planetary renaissance WILL become apparent to even the most at-present comatose sleeper.

3) The evil is being uprooted and is being defeated.

That is my conviction as has been since April 2020.

About eight months ago I took a whole new look at Présídent Ťrůmp and what he has been doing – and re-orientated what I thought my opinion of him was.

4) When he first entered the pŕesidency, I had looked at and heard about his tweets, and thought, “Gosh. Can you believe it. This is the Pŕĕsidenţ of the Uníted Státés. How very unstatesmanlike to be tweeting stuff like this”.

5) But about eight months ago, I thought, "Why has every single article that has been written about him in the British media since he started running for office been – without exception – negative, negative, negative?".

It has been instructive to look back at our tweets re' the pandemic from early in 2020. So here are the questions we have today as we start in 2021. Feel free to add to the list. Let us see how these age a year from now:
1/n👇

1. Getting the world vaccinated -
How can we get the vaccine to everyone? First, we must make enough, then overcome the hesitancy, solve the problems of logistics of distribution and administration. We are struggling in all these areas.
2/n 👇

2. The dosing regimen-
Is it better to give 1 dose of 2-dose regimen to more people vs. give both doses to few?
Data from both Pfizer and Moderna vaccines that if you look at the cases after 12 days of 1st shot to the second shot, the efficacy may be in 80-90% range
3/n 👇

3. Vaccine prioritization:
Should we first give the vx to younger HCWs to keep hospitals open or to all the elderly who are likely to be sicker and the reasons hospitals will be overwhelmed?
Israel is doing a fantastic job getting all the elderly vaccinated first.
4/n 👇

4. Variant strains:
RNA virus tend to mutate. Vx are targeting the Spike protein of the Sars-Cov-2. Will there be enough mutation at critical points to make the virus resistant to the Vx?
This will require regular sequencing/monitoring. Besides the UK, who will do this?
5/n 👇

A serious reasoning error that is particularly common among educated people is to argue that if a study hasn't been done on a particular question we have 'no data', and therefore no basis on which to form beliefs or act.

This is incorrect and dangerous. 1/

There is almost always a reference class we can use to make a sensible prediction, and often we can reason about the causal mechanism directly.

To see how this is clearly wrong, consider these two extreme cases: 2/

a. Before a vaccine trial is conducted we have 'no data' on how likely it is to work.

But we can estimate the likelihood just fine! To start with we can just check the base rate of all vaccine trials.

What fraction of all vaccine trials in history have had +ve results? 3/

That gives a much better estimate than pure agnosticism.

b. Imagine now that the vaccine trial results have come back positive. But by chance all the vaccines were given in a blue room.

So, will the vaccine still work if given in a red room? I guess we have 'no data'.

4/

So can we say nothing about about whether vaccines work in red rooms?

That is plainly ridiculous — we understand the causal mechanism and it doesn't involve room colour, so in fact we can give a near definitive answer to that question. 5/

Thread: A look back at the top 10 most-read @undarkmag stories published in 2020, starting with…

#10: I had not personally heard of the Voynich manuscript — a cryptic, centuries old “text” that still baffles researchers — until super-smart @jillianefoley brought this story idea to us. If you don’t know about this puzzle, prepare to be fascinated:

#9: A riveting review by @Svobodster of @jameshamblin's book "Clean" and our collective obsession with "surface notions of cleanliness."

#8: My personal favorite headline of the year, which I continue to argue contains a gift to any budding garage band looking for a name. (You’re welcome). Story by the always excellent

#7: Written all the way back on April 16th, @kategammon’s smart look at the anti-vaxx community’s then-percolating suspicions around the hunt for a Covid-19 vaccine seems eerily prescient as vaccine roll-outs get underway now.

An important part of growing as a researcher is developing research taste. But it can be hard to explicitly work on. So I wanted to share some concrete exercises for developing research taste.

(Take my advice with a grain of salt! Note version: https://t.co/2BhyxOKy3q )

Exercise 1: Write down a list of research ideas. Have a mentor you respect rate each idea 1-10. Discuss ideas where you disagree with them after reflection.

It often takes several months of work to truly test an idea. Asking a mentor is a cheap proxy.

Exercise 2: Pay attention when other people try ideas you’ve had. How did the results compare with your expectations?

If you’re investing in brainstorming, you’ll have tens or hundreds of research ideas for each one you try. It can be emotionally uncomfortable when someone publishes an idea you had, but it’s an opportunity to get precious feedback for free.

Exercise 3: Interview researchers around you on their taste. Why do they work on the problems they do? How do they pick problems? What’s their “big picture” of research?

Bonus: If you have a great interview, you might consider writing it up with their permission.

There is a distinction between what is something you ought to do and what is legal. It is legal to drink yourself to death. It is probably not a good idea. The distinction is not a small one. Let's apply it to the social norms many people suggest we adopt on silencing others.

I hear quite frequently arguments to the effect that private platforms are legally _allowed_ to silence people. And yes, they are, and yes, they should be. Is this a good idea, though? Let's have a quick look for a moment.

It's possible to imagine a society where every restaurant refuses service to people of the wrong political background, every supermarket checks to see if people arriving match a particular political affiliation before selling them groceries.

We can imagine neighbors only talking to other neighbors of the correct political tribe, jobs refusing to allow people with the wrong political beliefs to apply, etc. This is probably a thing that is legal or at least ought to be legal.

Is it, however, a recipe for a peaceful society? Or would it ultimately lead to something more bloody than the wars of religion during the Protestant Reformation?

Istigatha - a thread 🧵.

Found in the collection of risaa’il and fataawaa of Shaykhul-Islaam Ibn Taymiyyah (rahimahullaah) found in the Maktabah ath-Thaahirriyah,

In the screenshots, what is found in brackets is an addition from Mukhtasar al-Fataawaa al-Misriyyah.
(1/25)

(2/25)

It is not allowed for one to worship anyone except Allah. Dua is a form of worship. We must call upon Allah alone

It says in Surah Jinn verse 18

“And the masaajid are for Allaah (Alone), so do not call upon anyone along with Allaah.”
(3/25)

(4/25)

Abdullah bin Mas’ud (radiyallaahu ‘anhu) said: “People used to make du’aa to the Angels, and ‘Uzayr and al-Maseeh (the Messiah, Isa bin Maryam, alayhis salaam), so Allaah the Most High said:
(5/25)

#Arsenal re: rebuilding | I know we all want this club to be successful again. In that light, there is work to be done in terms of how we build-out the squad moving forward. But for me, that cannot be all about buying every single player (1/12) #AFC

We are undoubtedly going to be linked to a lot of names from now and running through the summer...but what truly makes the most sense? Where in the team are - right now - the biggest questions? For me it's CM, CB, and long-term at CF. Most of the spine (2/12)

Yes Auba extended and we still have Laca, but both are on the wrong side of 30, and long-term, it's unlikely they'll be here and performing. The only question we don't have at CB is around Gabriel. The CM debate continues about a number of players & if they're good enough (3/12)

Arguments can easily be made for a CM purchase in the summer, as well as a CB depending on how things shake out with Mavropanos, Chambers, and Saliba's loan at Nice. What there should not be questions on, is our attacking options (4/12)

I am always adamant about the necessity in finding a balance between veteran pieces, a core of prime players, and a sprinkling of young talent that have unquestionable futures. You need all three to be a club that can sustain itself both financially and in terms of results (5/12)

🧵 THREAD 🧵
1) Recent Аzeri propaganda campaign, “Аrmеոiaոs have a gеոе for schizophrenia & other mental disorders”, is a narrative often gloatingly thrown in the middle of heated debates as a derisive argument against the collective sanity of

2) So let’s debunk this.

The study they refer to, is a groundbreaking peer-reviewed paper by Armenian molecular geneticists. What it says is that by studying 225 affected and 225 healthy subjects they found a correlation between schizophrenia and a *variant of the “C1QB gene”,

3) at least in ARM population”, further studies in other populations would have to be done to confirm the results. This is a short summary of the paper’s conclusion.

So what is this “C1qB gene”? Is it an “Armenian gene”, as Аzeris like to claim? ⬇️

4) C1qB “gene” is a subcomponent of C1q protein complex which is a component of C1 complement system — C1 is what makes up the innate human/animal immune system. It is involved in a bunch of very crucial immune system functions.

5) Azеris claiming “they don’t have this gene” is the most amusing response I get. Well, the only way you wouldn’t “have it” is if you were a spiոeless cell, i.e. an amoeba; or in the best case if you were very siск (C1q deficiency), or

POV: Midoriya is confronted about being a villain and goes on defense.

~~~

They’re in Izuku’s hideout. It’s just his; he doesn’t want it to have any connections with the League so he can keep them safe. They were his family, after all.

Izuku’s cornered, his heart surprisingly calm, with Kacchan and Shouto having herded him into the hallway’s corner.

he can’t help but laugh.

What faulty thinking on their part.

He’s always had the upper hand. Always a hidden ace up his sleeve, that which only he knew of. He ruled over them, and probably always will. They were smart: but were they intelligent? Were they genius? Surely not. And Izuku was right.

The collar of his shirt brushed against his neck enough to snap him out of his thoughts. Kacchan was trying to interrogate him on why he became a villain.

The Pandemic has got me thinking. On TV, people of the future are always very comfortable with data. They collect it. They analyze it. They adjust their strategies in real time. Not in days or hours or minutes but often literally in SECONDS.🧵👇

They run simulations of different outcomes. The simulations aren't always right but they seem to put them in the ballpark of what's reasonable. People take the simulations and data seriously. They factor them into their planning.

Even when the future government is evil, it's still smart. Even when the future government is rigid and uncreative in how it responds to stuff, it's responses are still logically related to the assumptions it has made, the data it has collected and the analyses it has performed.

Unfortunately, our civilization is NOT THAT. We collect data but usually haphazardly and in ways that make it hard to draw any conclusions. It often takes a long time for us to make sense of data. Politicians often throw out the numbers completely.

We don't seem to care what the probability of various outcomes are. We don't seem to use probabilities when making decisions. Perhaps, you're thinking about the election predictions and about how they were close but not quite right.