Mollyycolllinss | Buzz Chronicles

Here's a quick thread on the chronology leading up to today's vote in the Scottish Parliament on whether ministers should go to court to investigate the finances of Donald Trump's Scottish resorts via a legal mechanism known as an Unexplained Wealth Order.👇

Intrigue surrounding the source of Trump's finances here is by no means new. An editorial in @TheScotsman questioned where the money was coming from back in *2008*. But the UWO issue came to prominence last Feb during exchanges in the Scottish Parliament.

The issue returned to parliament last November, when First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said any consideration or application for an UWO were "properly matters for the Crown Office, not for the Scottish ministers."

This argument went against the explicit definition of who is able to apply for a UWO, as set out in the Criminal Finances Act 2017 / Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, which states that "the Court of Session may, on an application made by the Scottish ministers, make an UWO"

The leading advocate, Aidan O'Neill QC, has also said Scottish ministers alone are responsible for decisions around UWOs, and that transferring responsibility to the Crown Office or Lord Advocate "does not and can not" change its legal responsibilities.

Soumyadipta
@Soumyadipta

Many have accused the Narendra Modi government of not doing enough to change the biased historical narratives set in motion during the 54 years of Congress rule.
The #ChauriChaura centenary celebrations is one such initiative to set right, a historical wrong.

Thread begins.

What is the Chauri Chaura incident?
On February 4, 1922 at Chauri Chaura in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, a procession was taken out in support of Gandhi's Non-Cooperation Movement.
The police, on orders from the British government, fired on the peaceful march, triggering an outrage.

First a little background to the incident and why the face-off happened with the British administered police.
The protest was called against the atrocities that was unleashed on the locals when the Non Cooperation movement started in Gorakhpur. Several leaders were arrested.

A group of 2,000 people gathered to protest as part of Gandhi's call for Non Cooperation with the British. The crowd swelled soon.
The police were ordered to fire in the air to disperse the crowd. This further agitated them.
Then the police fired at the protestors, injuring many.

Brian Feroldi
@BrianFeroldi

1/ An ode to @JeffBezos

Jeff is stepping down from CEO and moving on to Executive Chairman

He's one of the greatest owner/operators of all time

$10,000 invested in $AMZN at IPO is currently worth

$17.3 million!

Here's a list of my favorite Bezos facts and quotes 👇

2/ "We don’t celebrate a 10% increase in the stock price like

we celebrate excellent customer experience.

We aren’t 10% smarter when that happens

and conversely

aren’t 10% dumber when the stock goes the other way."

3/ Bezos invested $250,000 in Google in 1998

That's worth several BILLION dollars today

4/ "Your margin is my opportunity"

5/ "There are two kinds of companies,

those that work to try to charge more

and those that work to try to charge less.

We will be the second."

Breaking the Silence
@BtSIsrael

Last October, Israelis were rightly horrified to hear that ~400 acres of forest burned down as a direct result of an IDF training exercise carried out in a nature reserve,despite warnings.
Now look at what happened when the IDF insisted on training in a Palestinian village today:

This is Jinba, a village in Firing Zone 918. Large-scale artillery forces arrived there this AM w/ armored vehicles. In response to @acri_online who reminded them of the damage caused last time, the IDF promised to avoid damaging residents' property. But somehow, this happened:

And this is what some of the agricultural lands looked like this morning, after the heavy armored vehicles flattened them. The residents depend on this land for their livelihood. Several months of hard work can be destroyed in a matter of minutes. (Video: Guy Botavia)

Destroying agricultural fields isn't new. Here's what a Nahal Brig soldier saw in 2004-05: "There was wheat that overflowed beyond the fields, so the instruction [...] that the platoon commander got, or at least what he said to us, [was] to trample."

Here's another picture from this morning, this time from fields belonging to residents of the neighboring Bir al-Eid:

Daniele Polencic
@danielepolencic

THREAD

Nginx has a service mesh too. Is it any good?

Let's find out.

1/

Most service meshes use Envoy as a proxy and for good reasons:

1. It's fully open-source
2. It can be customised on-the-fly via an API
3. It can be extended

2/

Is there a service mesh without Envoy? Of course!

The best example is @Linkerd that uses a custom proxy written in Rust.

Linkerd is smaller and more focussed but it is also slower to add features.

And now there's a new entry: @nginx

3/

But isn't Nginx one of those products not fully open-source proxies?

Yes it is, but they made an exception.

When you run the Nginx Service Mesh you can use Nginx Plus (the paid product) as a proxy for free.

Great isn't it?

4/

How does the meshwork?

There are four main components:

- The API
- SPIRE (cert authority)
- NATS (message broker)
- Nginx Plus as a proxy

Grafana, Prometheus and Zipkin are automatically installed too.

Lawrence Glickman
@LarryGlickman

This is a good piece on fissures within the GOP but I think it mischaracterizes the Trump presidency as “populist” & repeats a story about how conservatives & the GOP expelled the far-right in the mid-1960s that is actually far more complicated. /1

I don’t think the sharp opposition between “hard-edge populism” & “conservative orthodoxy” holds. Many of the Trump administration’s achievements were boilerplate conservatism. Its own website trumpets things like “massive deregulation,” tax cuts, etc. /2

https://t.co/N97v85Bb79

The claim that Buckley and “key GOP politicians banded together to marginalize anti-Communist extremism and conspiracy-mongering” of the JBS has been widely repeated lately but the history is more complicated. /3

This tweet by @ThePlumLineGS citing a paper by @sam_rosenfeld and @daschloz on the "porous" boundary between conservatives, the GOP and the far-right is relevant in this context.

There's a great paper called "The Long New Right" that tells the story of the GOP/conservative movement's failure to police extremists for the last 50 years.

It's highly relevant to the insurrection and Marjorie Greene's lunacy.

I summed it up here:https://t.co/DTlzGomy5h pic.twitter.com/Dhc38CDuE2
— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) January 28, 2021

This is a separate point but I find it interesting that Gaetz, like Roy Moore did In his failed Senate campaign, disses McConnell. What are their actual policy differences? MM supported taking health care away from millions, a tax cut for the rich, conservative judges, etc. /5

A.R. Moxon
@JuliusGoat

If you ever want to consider how committed our society is to the foundational lie that life must be earned, and those who fail to earn it must die, consider that the proposition “giving everyone money to spend would be bad for the economy” is widely accepted as truth.

A new study found that giving low-income workers money upfront in their work period helped alleviate the mental burden of their financial problems and allowed them to be more productive \u2014 echoing other findings on the psychological impacts of poverty.https://t.co/zdxItTLDLZ
— NPR (@NPR) February 3, 2021

“Giving money to people in poverty solves poverty” is an obvious truth, which needs (another) study for proof, for the same reason that this finding will be ignored (again).

We don’t want to fix poverty, even if doing so helps everyone—not if it means life for the “undeserving.”

It’s not about saving money.

There's a great fear in this country that a single dollar might go to someone who might not deserve it; or that a single given dollar might be spent on something we deem unworthy.

We'll spend five dollars to prevent the waste of that one dollar.

The manifestations are everywhere. From the overt, gleefully cruel hostility of conservatism toward people in poverty, of course. But also hidden in almost everyone's assumptions.

Our use of charity as a way of controlling who gets helped, for example.

Charity isn't primarily an act.

Before the act comes an alignment.

Charity is the natural fruit of a deep alignment with the virtue of generosity.

It sure shouldn't be a delivery mechanism for one's own beliefs about worthiness.
— A.R. Moxon (@JuliusGoat) November 10, 2019

Even the reversal—a desire to prevent aid from going to "undeserving" wealthy who don't need it (true)—leads us to create obstacles to aid people in poverty often can't overcome, but wealthy people can.

Which is why wealthy people like means

Whenever someone proposes a means-testing solution, it's an indication they've internalized the lie, foundational to the United States, that some people deserve life and others don't.

It's an expensive lie.
— A.R. Moxon (@JuliusGoat) December 18, 2020

Sumit Grrg
@sumitgrrg

I just read all of Jeff Bezos's 23 letters to Amazon shareholders. And here's a thread with just one key-takeaway from each of these letters.

So if you're an artist or an entrepreneur looking to get some insight into the mind of this genius, read this right now.

1997: Focus relentlessly on your customers and long-term growth.

1998: Here are the 3 criteria Bezos wants managers to consider when hiring (to set the bar high):

1. Will you admire this person?

2. Will they raise the average level of effectiveness of the group?

3. Along what dimension might this person be a superstar?

1999: How to think long-term? Think: it's good enough today, but it will get so much better.

2000: "In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.” - Benjamin Graham

We aren’t 10% smarter when the share goes 10% up, nor 10% dumber when it goes down. We want to be weighed, & we're always working to build a heavier company.

Tony Connelly
@tconnellyRTE

Amid the hail of accusations that the EU wanted to put a hard border on the island of Ireland last Friday, it's worth pointing out what the ill-fated resort to Article 16 was about:

2/ Under the Commission's trade mechanism, any Covid vaccines leaving the EU for third countries would need export authorisations, ie to ensure vaccines were not being exported which were actually part of an avanced purchase agreement between member states + pharma companies

3/ Any movements of exports from one member state to another would NOT have required such an export authorisation

4/ Because of the NI Protocol, Northern Ireland would typically have availed of NOT having to had export authorisations for any vaccines being sent there from Belgium (or wherever)

5/ However, someone in the Commission spotted the fact that, also under the Protocol, there was unfettered movement of goods between NI and GB

Tamar Haspel
@TamarHaspel

Let’s talk about ORGANIC.

Robert Paarlberg’s new book on the food system is out today, and here’s an excerpt.

He’s not a fan of organic, and he makes some good points but misses others.

Here we go.

Organic's biggest shortcoming is that you need more land to grow the same amount of food.

The yield penalty happens in almost every crop, in almost every study.

The gap could narrow with more research/varieties, but it won’t go away.

This has big, bad climate implications.

The second issue I have with organic, which Paarlberg shares, is that its basic criterion is naturalness.

Natural doesn’t mean safe, or even safer. A farming standard based on it forces farmers to sometimes use more dangerous, less effective tools.

On human health, there’s scant evidence that pesticide residues on conventional produce are harmful to consumers (though it’s possible farmworkers could be at risk).

What I don’t want is for folks who can’t afford organic to worry about feeding their kids conventional produce.

On the plus side, Paarlberg acknowledges that the organic standard has some real advantages for animal welfare.

This is why I buy organic animal products.

Many in the organic world would like more regs ensuring animals have decent lives.

k.r.a.t.
@KWholesaler

all the boy cousins split off to talk about romances and personal growth since the last family reunion. the girl cousins go down to the creek to smoke cigarettes and throw knives

our conversation inevitably turns to the dark and mysterious world of the girl cousins. “why do they smoke those things? they smell so nasty!” teddy cried. “i saw a pack of birth control pills sitting out on lisa’s desk,” ronald said somberly.

quickly a consensus is reached that we need to find out exactly what the girls are talking about. gerald and i volunteer for recon. spying seems dishonorable but we agree bigger things might be at stake. edwin caught tara rolling her eyes at the Sunday school teacher.

we slip down to the creek by a trail cut by a jack rabbit. as we sneak, sly and quiet as foxes, the sense of boyish mischief departs and an oppressive feeling sets upon us instead. the thicket grows darker and the shadows twist the wrong way. we look at one another very coldly.

coming to a bank looking over the sand bar we see the girls sitting cross legged in a circle darkly painted on the sand. one girl sits in the middle but her face is covered by a kind of mask. a deer’s head. fat black flies buzz around her and her chest is painted sticky red.

Darkroom
@usedarkroom

Following up last year’s surprisingly popular "10 things you likely didn’t know about Darkroom" and your many requests for more tips, we put together a second edition that focuses on workflows in Darkroom. Click through to read it all right here in this thread.

1/10 Copy & Paste your Edits in Batch. Skip the hassles of re-applying each edit over and over again by copying your edits from the tap-and-hold library menu, History tool, or the Actions (•••) menu. Go to your other photos, and paste your edits onto them.

2/10 The joy of seeing your wonderful shot in motion is why we love Live Photos so much, and why we fully support editing and exporting them! While editing, Tap the “LIVE” button at the left top when viewing a Live Photo for playback.

3/10 Turn your iPhone to landscape for an iPad like editing experience, bringing some iPad exclusive functionality to iPhone. In the library grid we show the Library Sidebar, when viewing or editing we show the Photo Strip, and in the color tool we show our Color Histogram.

4/10 Manage while editing with the Photostrip. With the photo strip available on all devices in landscape orientation, you can skip & hop through your library while editing, or quickly compare multiple photos to find the one with the perfect expression or the perfect light.

Catastrophic Gohan
@TheGohan98

Dumb£dk@r wasn't like Pe£riyar?

He was an Anti-Hindu m0r0n just like Periy@r.

A wonderful piece from the Quora space "Tamil Right-Wingers"https://t.co/qokR0GQw4A
— Soumili Das (\u0938\u094c\u092e\u093f\u0932\u0940 \u0926\u093e\u0938 ) (\u09b8\u09cc\u09ae\u09bf\u09b2\u09c0 \u09a6\u09be\u09b8 ) (@Soumili_Squeaks) February 2, 2021

Yes it's true that he criticised K2@s but that doesn't make him any useful for Hindus.

His writings will remind you a lot of JNU Urban Naxals like Kanhaiya.

"Ancient Hindus had no sexual morals, brother cohabited with sister, son with mother, father with daughter... Men freely shared women & none had exclusive right over her... Prostitution flourished in the worst form...bestiality prevailed, done even by Rishis."
Riddles in Hinduism

This is what Shri Ram said in Kishkindha-Kanda of Valmiki Ramayana regarding such immoral relationships.

But how could Neela Katt@ppa not realize this?

Because he severely lacking analytical capabilities of Hindu texts.

"Hindu Gods were miserable cowards who had to hide behind their wives to save themselves from Asuras. How could these cowards give power to Shakti? Did the Brahmins invent the practice of worshipping of Goddesses to put a new commodity in the market?"

Riddles in Hinduism.

Mentorshipzim
@mentorshipzim

1. This morning we looked at wills & will writing but that is not the only component of inheritance. You can either die with a will or without one. Those who die without die intestate. And intestate comes in 3 ways.

2. a) If a person dies quiet a valid will,
b) if the person appointed to benefit from a will dies first & no substitution of heir is made
c) if the person appointed cannot take under a will.
The law focuses on the rights of the surviving spouse and the child if there is no will.

3. 2 major things affect intestate succession and these are date of death and marital status. This is because the current law ONLY affects people who died after 1 Nov 1997 & there are different laws that affect married & single people at death. The type of marriage applies too.

4. If you are married in terms of general law or what was once called ‘-Chapter 37’ & now ‘Chapter 5:11 or are married under ‘Chapter 5:07’ which is a registered customary marriage (muchato wekamudzviti) the Deceased Estates Succession Act applies. It’s only for registered 💍

5. If you are married under an unregistered customary law union (UCLU) which means having the traditional wedding without registration, the Administration of Estates Act applies. I don’t want to labour you with the technicalities but the distinction is very important.

Osaretin Victor Asemot...
@asemota

Sometimes I wonder if we should be building certain types of African organizations with obvious gaps in people resourcing?Then I remember what my uncle and his friends did for the financial sector with MAYO and PTC.

Edtech has actually been in Africa longer than we think.

MAYO/PTC was actually the first Ed-Tech company in Nigeria and also the first place I worked and did my NYSC. We took UK accountancy and banking institute materials and used tech to modify and republish local versions of study text for students preparing for professional exams.

We also provided prep classes and corporate training. This was how we also started @SwiftaSystems, it was initially from tech training before we moved to product development and services.

For tech, we were self-taught but we created a new market for ourselves with education.

Education ALWAYS comes first before adoption when it comes to tech. We aren't doing nearly enough at the moment. Everyone wants to build products for the educated market and ignore the uneducated market. Uneducated doesn't mean formal school, it is about industry and paradigms.

Current Ed-Tech initiatives are focusing on basic education but market education is a significant opportunity. No matter how simple you think your product is to use, there will be many who will not use it until they understand the fundamentals and why it exists at all.

macrocephalopod
@macrocephalopod

A few things that I didn't cover yesterday when I talked about equity factor models (it's a huge area and it's impossible to more than scrape the surface)

A few people in the DMs asking about equity factor models so here's a short explainer.

Let's make it a concrete problem -- you are the risk manager at a big multi-manager hedge fund with ~100 sub-PMs each of whom has a portfolio of 10-50 stocks, long and short.
— macrocephalopod (@macrocephalopod) February 2, 2021

1. How do you get the exposure matrix Xt?

There are different ways to estimate it, depending on the factor. Simplest is factors like industry or country exposure where the entries can be 0/1 depending on whether the stock is in that industry/country or not.

Some exposures can be estimated by linear regression on historical data, if you already have a time series which approximates the factor returns. E.g. exposure to the market factor (beta) is estimated this way, by regressing each stock against the S&P 500 (or some other index)

This also works for "macro" factors e.g. you can estimate exposures for each stock to commodity prices, exchange rates, interest rates, GDP or inflation surprises etc by regressing stock returns against the relevant historical time series.

Finally you can have exposures which are heuristically derived from other observable data about the stock, e.g. accounting data, analyst reports, past price movements etc. In this case you find some metric which measures the factor you care about (e.g. price to earnings) and