SNP thread

1. Scotland's independence rested on the UK staying in the single market - that is why we saw repeated Brexit related litigation in the Scottish courts.

2. If an independent Scotland wished to join the EU, a hard border between Scotland & England would be required to protect the single market & prevent migrants using Scotland as a route into England.

3. Then there are the issues re currency & debt which would need to be settled before EU membership became a serious proposal.

Many in the SNP realise this, hence the divisions we're witnessing.

4. Just as the Brexit Party popularity waned after mission accomplished, the SNP's popularity rests on campaigning, rather than achieving what they're campaigning for.

Polls show that a hard border isn't popular in a country that relies heavily on tourism.

5. The SNP would have been better placed to set their sights lower & supported an Efta/EEA Brexit, but they went all out to stop the UK exiting the EU and ultimately lost.

A hollowed out cause is all that remains for the SNP, with no realistic prospect of success.

Which book took you the longest time to actually finish reading?

For me: Underworld. 17 years from buying it to actually getting around to reading it, and maybe 19 months on and off to make myself read it until the end.

Still, ticked it off the list ✔

Second place goes to The Charterhouse of Parma, which Stendhal wrote in 52 days. According to the Oxfam Books receipt I used as a bookmark I bought it on 11 April 2009. Finished it last month.

Coming Up For Air was torture. It's nature's punishment for autodidacts.

1. @JonathanTurley
Trump has only been out of office and, therefore, no longer (purportedly) immunized from criminal prosecution for ~1 month. Also, because of R delay, Garland is still awaiting confirmation. Once Garland is AG, expect a thorough



2. investigation of Trump for inciting insurrection in violation of 18 U.S.C. 2383, together with other federal crimes. Once that investigation is completed, based on the information that is currently public, there is a good chance that Trump will be prosecuted for violating

3. 18 U.S.C. 2383, together with other federal crimes. Not absolutely guaranteed. But a very good chance. The only element of inciting insurrection that is open to credible dispute is Trump’s intent. Is there sufficient evidence that he intended his speech to incite imminent

4. lawlessness? As you know (or should know), criminal intent is invariably established by circumstantial evidence. That means prosecutors must analyze everything Trump did and said (and didn't do or say) before, during and after his incendiary speech.

5. That investigation takes time. Sometimes a lot of time to empanel a grand jury and begin issuing subpoenas and seeking warrants. The fact that Trump's previous crimes, including the 10 felonies outlined in Vol. II of Mueller's report, haven't been prosecuted is irrelevant.

Unlike #ETH and #BTC $ Algo uses delegated proof of stake (DPOS) #AlgorandandFriends

Under the DPOS mechanism, the community will empower a number of users the delegates to choose the next block. This is a mechanism that is used by blockchains such as EOS etc. $Algo

There is a fixed number of delegates & these delegates can be viewed as having centralized control. In the adipose blockchain, the delegates may own a tiny fraction of the total money in the system. Yet, the whole blockchain is secure. $Algo

The Algorand consensus mechanism is called pure proof of stake. And it operates on this simple principle. It makes cheating by a minority of the money impossible and cheating by the majority stupid. $Algo

$Algo developed a mechanism so that those with small stakes cannot cheat, those that have a large stake in the network won’t cheat. It will completely devalue their holdings & make no economic sense. As long as 2/3 of the majority are honest, the protocol will work just fine. $

Ronald Reagan called Medicare & Medicaid dangerous socialism in 1961... he was a right winger of the Barry Goldwater variety, not the warm and fuzzy presidential muppet he has become in his canonization by the 1980s Alex P. Keatons in the commentariat.

Reagan launched his 1980 presidential campaign at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, Mississippi, just 16 years after Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney were lynched there, 17 years after Medgar Evers' slaying and 12 years after Dr. King's assassination.

He did it send a message to white voters, not different from the message Donald Trump sent. He was letting white people who were resentful of civil rights advances know whose side he was on, further codifying the GOP as America's white interests party.

Reagan gutted what was left of the Great Society to shovel tax cuts into the pockets of the super rich. (My mother's federal job was deleted by his first presidential budget, though my absentee father was a big Reagan fan. Needless to say they divorced).

Reagan tried to ignore the AIDS pandemic which killed more people than Trump's COVID pandemic has. He just didn't give it the time of day, even though at the time, it was something seemingly everyone thought about, talked about and was terrified of.

Saturday thoughts on market pull. What is it? How is it different from Total Addressable Market (TAM)? And what ideas tend to have strong market pull?

A thread >>

1) First: "Market pull" != market size.

IMO (and most VCs will disagree!!), market size (TAM) doesn't *really* matter. But market pull DEFINITELY does. For that reason, I've almost never asked a startup about TAM.

Why?

2) First, what is TAM?

TAM is a sizing of how big your market is. A good way to estimate this is - if you can get to all potential buyers and based on how much $$ they are worth to you, how much money can your company make if you took the whole mkt?

3) An example: Say we run an e-commerce site that sells hippo food. TAM in the world:

-1000 zoos have on average 3 hippos = 3000 hippos.
-Each hippo eats $100 worth of food each day
-365 days * $100 * 3000 hippos = $110m per year globally

4) But, we'll come back to this.

Why I don't like TAM - it doesn't take into acct a few things:

A) how hard it is to get customers
B) how much more you can upsell once you have customers
C) how fast the mkt is moving up or down

You wanna know the real reason WHY the "Old Guard" (Evil Powers that once ruled this world) wanted all of you dumbed down?
Your brains are supposed to work like mine does. You All are supposed to be able to see into the future etc. They poison all of you with foods that keep

you asleep.
Certain Daily products that all of you use like toothpaste,Deodorant,soaps etc do harm to you without you even knowing that harm is being done. Those who don't know these things are just so used to being the way they are and think it's all "Normal" when it's really

not. Your minds are designed for so much more and they know/knew this. THEY want all of you dumbed to so you just fall in line to what they say. They want you to follow all the latest Trends, They want you to follow the "Stars". Most of the stars advertise products but I

guarantee you that they themselves don't use 90% of what they are advertising on the market today.
They are being used as puppets, thinking all of you will just follow them blindly falling into all the traps they have had set out for you ALL THESE YEARS..

Look at Portland for

example, They are legalizing all recreational drugs. Allowing Young adults who's brains aren't fully developed to just poison themselves. What happens in 5-10-15 years from now? Our entire youth is poisoned more than they already are? All our adults that the children look up too

ALIYU ABDULHAMEED, NIRSAL MANAGING DIRECTOR/CEO’S 5-YEAR SCORECARD: DECEMBER 2015 – SEPTEMBER 2020
Facilitated 510 billion worth of Economic Activity with over 515 000 direct jobs created across the agricultural value chain.

Thread.

·

2. Aliyu Abdulhameed @aliyu_hameed was appointed as Managing Director/CEO of NIRSAL Plc, a wholly-owned corporation of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), created in 2013 to stimulate the flow of affordable finance and investments into the

3. agricultural sector by de-risking the agribusiness finance value chain, fixing agricultural value chains, building long-term capacity, and institutionalizing incentives for agricultural lending.

4. In five (5) years of leading NIRSAL from 23 December 2015, Aliyu Abdulhameed has built NIRSAL from near-zero to a position of national, continental and global recognition as an authority in agricultural risk management and financing.

5. Aliyu’s 5-year Scorecard gives an account, across various performance dimensions, of how he has led NIRSAL to challenge the status quo, ask the tough questions and design game-changing systems and

Strongly endorse everything in this @OsitaNwanevu piece. One of the key mistakes I see among Dems, both online & in the real world, is thinking that people believe right-wing nonsense because they are unintelligent or uneducated.

In the area I know best, climate change, it's been found repeatedly that climate denialists & skeptics have, on average, MORE higher education than those who accept the science. They know MORE about climate science. They have, on average, HIGHER verbal intelligence.

What they do is adopt the conclusion that best serves their social tribe and then use their intelligence & education to build a case for it. It's called "motivated reasoning" & everyone is subject to it, very much including the smartest people.

1/ I joined a gym >3 months ago and started up with my old routine of 1 day on/1 day off, upper/lower split, doing slower reps at lighter weights to failure, like I learnt from @mangan150 a few years ago. I was hospitalized with pneumonia 2 years ago, which set me back a lot.

2/ I used to also do HIIT, getting my pulse up to 160/94% of theoretical max. After the pneumonia, I'd struggled to get it >145. A cardiologist recommended I resume regular HIIT over a year ago to aid recovery. I failed to do so.

I also switched focus to
strength/hypertrophy

3/ as I'd lost some muscle. That led me to cut HIIT entirely, on the advice of gym staff and Twitter folk.

My lifting regimen has been 1 warmup & 2-4 work sets. I feel I've been progressing and have been adding weight over time. My squats feel limited by my CV system though.

4/ So I decided to add HIIT back to leg days to train my CV system. I did 7 sets of v-squats yesterday, ramping up to 360 (very heavy for me) and back down to 2 "burn out" sets at 180. This video's of the previous leg day's 360 set, to give an idea of my approach.

5/ The last 2 sets at 180 were like this video, also from the previous session. I found my pulse to be 152-156 after the last 2 sets, which was very gratifying. That showed my CV was improving, and my squats were really intense, as I'd hoped they'd be. I did hip ad- & abduct,

We promised people that if we won the Senate, we would send out $2,000 survival checks. They delivered us to victory—and now we MUST deliver.

“Targeting” checks to a smaller group fails to do that. People need help like never before, and we must put money in their pockets.

“Targeting” checks isn’t just bad for people, it’s bad policy too! It’s not humane, it's not smart, it’s not effective, and it’s not even fiscally responsible. Not to mention that it doesn't meet the scale of this crisis.

Help me spread the word about 4 obvious reasons why:

1⃣The survival checks often use 2019 tax data to measure someone’s income.

Millions lost their jobs in 2020 due to COVID—that’s the whole point of this relief!—and therefore their income from 1 or 2 years ago is no longer accurate. They need help now and we must provide it.

Even if someone isn’t one of the nearly 1 million additional people losing their job EVERY single week, they likely lost hours and therefore had their overall income significantly reduced.

By “targeting,” we cut out people who are desperately in need of help.

2⃣The data from people who filed for unemployment shows that more than 20% of those earning between $50k and $70k were still food insecure.

That's up 16% from 2019—and it's why food banks have such long lines. We need to put money in their pockets so they can feed their family.

Many people are stressed by social media, especially Twitter.

Here is what I do to keep my sanity:

1. Be selective who you follow. Choose uplifting people and people you enjoy talking to.

2. Mute and block liberally. “But freedom of speech”. Nonsense. You choose your friends and parties in real life. Same applies to social media. It’s not immoral to ignore people who dunk on you. This also includes the annoying “devil’s advocate” personalities.

3. Choose your online persona. I mostly use Twitter for work and for engagement with the .NET community. But I’m still a human. Don’t let others dictate what you can and cannot talk about.

4. Choose wether you use your real name or a pseudonym. Social media is about authentic and real human encounters. Your name isn’t as important has how honest you can be in your conversations. Being anonymous is totally cool if that lets you be who you are.

THREAD - Qu'est ce que “Lifelog", le précurseur de Facebook ?
PARTIE 1

Le projet Lifelog est une idée sortie du Pentagone. C'est un projet ambitieux visant à créer une base de données permettant de suivre l’existence entière d’une personne.

Dirigé par DARPA, le service de recherche du ministère de la Défense (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ), LifeLog visait à rassembler en un seul endroit à peu près tout ce qu’un individu dit, voit ou fait.

DARPA fonctionne comme la branche de recherche du ministère de la défense et est responsable de l'utilisation de l'argent des contribuables, dont on ne rend pas compte légalement, pour mener des opérations au noir, à l'abri des regards du public.

Les appels téléphoniques passés, les émissions de télévision regardées, les magazines lus, les billets d’avion achetés, les e-mails envoyés et reçus, tout y passait !

The Feynman Technique is a foundational mental model for unlocking growth in your career, startup, business, or writing.

A thread on how it works and how it can change your life...

Richard Feynman was an American theoretical physicist.

He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 for his groundbreaking work in quantum electrodynamics.

Feynman's true genius, however, was in his ability to convey extremely complex ideas in simple, digestible ways.

Richard Feynman observed that complexity and jargon are often used to mask a lack of deep understanding.

The Feynman Technique is a learning framework that forces you to strip away needless complexity and develop a deep, elegant understanding of a given topic.

The Feynman Technique involves four key steps:

(1) Identify
(2) ELI5 ("Explain It To Me Like I'm 5")
(3) Reflect & Study
(4) Organize, Convey & Review

Let's cover each step and how you can make this powerful framework work for you...

Step 1: Identify

What is the topic you want to learn more about?

Identify the topic and write down everything you know about it.

Read and research the topic and write down all of your new learnings (and the sources of each).

This first step sets the stage for what is to come.

If you know me IRL, you know that my (male) partner is our household's primary cook and launderer. We share parenting more equally, but we have each been the primary parent at various times. I have a few thoughts about this.

One of my BFFs asked me one time, when she was a new mom, how it was that my kid was so close to their dad? Her baby only wanted her, and her husband was quick to hand the crying baby off to mom and admit defeat.

My answer: You've got. To leave. Them alone together.

Nobody can develop a close, trusting relationship if that relationship is always being observed and mediated by a third party.

We had the same barriers to this as every family. I was the breastfeeding parent, and I was home more in the first couple years.

But leaving the kid alone with their dad meant that they developed their own way of dealing with each other. He didn't comfort the baby the same way I did. He had a different sleep routine (with some similarities, of course.)

This was good for all three of us!

But what if I was constantly there, so the baby knew that the comfort of breastfeeding was just on the other side of that door? It would have been harder for the two of them to work things out without me.

Why do we track institutional footprints? 🐘 (Thread)

Large institutions like mutual funds, hedge funds, banks, insurance companies, trusts, etc. amount for over 75% of all volume. These institutions move the market, not you and I.

It makes sense that if these guys are moving the markets, we would ideally want to buy the same stocks they are buying, but before they buy them? Right?

So, let’s get a clear understanding of how and why this is so important and what this might look like behind the scenes.

For starters, let’s discuss what we mean by a large institution. In this case, we are referring to the many funds, pensions, trusts, etc. that are responsible for managing tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars.

Hence, they easily attract and can afford to retain the planet’s top talent, not to mention, their research budgets are enormous.

They have access to information and resources that the retail crowd simply does not, and if they did, it would likely be extremely unaffordable.

1/Zach has the history right (again). I doubt the current political leadership read the book where Summers et al explained what they did, unless they look at borrowed copies. Here it is: https://t.co/4gyFiagaj3

2/ But the summary is that Summers, Geithner, Orszag, Emanuel agreed on telling Obama and Biden in December 2008 that about $800b was an adequate stimulus. Would lower unemployment just below 8% by late 2010. Romer thought $2.1T or $1.7T was needed to achieve full employment.

3/ They wouldn't let her make the case in writing for $1.2T because her number could leak. The reasons for $800b were: they wanted the bill passed by February, so they could move on to health care reform and cap and trade; they had no ways to spend more;

4/ spending more might kick off inflation or cause markets to fall for fear of inflation; that might lead to more bank runs; more bank runs might require a second TARP so they couldn't ask Congress for too much for recovery; Pelosi would give them whatever they asked

5/ for but they didn't think they could get the needed 1 or 2 R Senators quickly if they asked for more; they wanted 60 but had only 58 D Senators; popular "moonshots" or signature items in the package would take too long (Biden asked for that);

RIPPLE’S DUE PROCESS CLAIM:
In @Ripple’s Answer it asserted a defense that the SEC should be barred from claiming #XRP is a security today because it violates Due Process and principles of Fair Notice. Previously, I discussed a similar concept called the doctrine of equitable

estoppel. I explained the law protects a party from being harmed by another party's voluntary conduct. That conduct may be ACTIONS, INACTION, SILENCE, or ACQUIESCENCE. Although the SEC never declared XRP a non-security, for EIGHT YEARS it openly traded in unison with #ETH and

#BTC. During this time, some from the SEC, including Clayton, commented that #BTC and/or #ETH were not securities. For 8 years the SEC’s actions, inaction, silence and acquiescence implied that XRP was also NOT a security. Let’s review a few of the SEC’s actions, inaction,

silence and/or acquiescence related to #XRP. (1) During the period of time the SEC claims XRP was a security, the SEC granted Ripple permission to take a minority stake in MoneyGram (MGI). Ripple invested $50 million purchasing approximately 9% of MGI. The SEC approved this

purchase of MGI with the full knowledge that Ripple would encourage MGI to use XRP as a cross-border utility token related to remittances. The SEC allowed the use of this so-called illegal security to be utilized not just by Ripple, but by MGI. The SEC admitted to this knowledge