Stepping back from the ledge - a thread.

The military and veterans have been mythologized far too long. All are infallible heroes regardless of their service record. 1/

Yet on Jan 6th, veterans and some members of the military, encouraged by the President and other politicians, actively participated or supported the insurrection in DC. 2/

All this because the favored candidate lost and a self-fulfilling prophecy of alleged election fraud led to his inevitable defeat. Defeat equated to theft. 3/

How did we get here? In part, a disinterested public willing to overlook our flaws while correcting Vietnam’s scornful legacy. Military leaders repeatedly telling their subordinates how special they were – the 1% trope. 4/

This message is 100% worth your watch and share, not just on Twitter, but Facebook etc
https://t.co/xpqPnsMvq0

A message from a Republican leader and an iconic figure in our culture, who gets it, and maybe might pierce thru the fever dream too many fell into.

That is, please also share it with those co-workers, friends and family who don't realize the stakes of what is going on, and the near-miss to our democracy of what just played out.

In sifting thru video, I have seen not just the stupid things we all saw like the selfies and literally crapping on the floor. But people need to understand that there was also a harder, darker part...

The crowd chanting "Hang Mike Pence, Hang Mike Pence" as they stormed the police line looking for him (Note: his wife and daughter was also there with him),

officers literally crying in physical pain as the mass of the crowd did a coordinated "heave-ho" to physically crush them with their combined body mass, officers beaten and one killed with a fire extinguisher blow to the head...

Good day my fellow Nigerians. This what happened this morning on our way going to Lekki (Along Anthony Ikeja) we are heading towards Ikorodu road when these rogue men in uniform stopped us again. They started searching our car uncontrollably. they checked our paper and everything

Was Completed. they told us to come down from the car which we did.the next thing d other man said we should go and meet their oga. that's where I started shouting what is our offense why would we meet your oga. bcos I already sense that all their effort trying to find anything

Incriminating was futile so they want to forcefully extort us. We reluctantly meet the oga. I asked the oga pls what is our offense, oga said we used the "wrong u-turn" which is a lie, bcos about 4 to 5 motors made a u-turn there, our car was the only one they stopped bcos they

Sense maybe we were Yahoo boys so that they can exhort us as usual. That's when I brought out my phone to start recording dem. One guy said "call the anti-robbery Squad I was saying to myself which offense did we commit. However, SARS is the Only Anti-robbery squad I know and

They had banished dem so whc SARS again are we talking about here. I nvm I continue my video, in the course of it one of dem even slapped me but I continue. To cut the long story short: one of us called a fellow Police officer that speaks to dem b4 they let's go

What is it to be Sri Lankan? The answer to this question is something that I struggle with. Should it not mean that we are a citizen: a citizen of a proud, diverse nation with respect and equality for all. A nation that is united. A nation that celebrates our differences. (1)

However, the year 1956 marked the first significant show of overt oppression against an ethnicity. (2)

Politicians of the day and those that followed, did not have the best interests of the country or its citizens, but had their own personal thirst for power and fame in mind. (3)

While claiming to act in the name of self-determination for the Sri Lankan identity, they oppressed and asserted dominance against minorities, and we embarked down the slippery slope that led us to where we are today. (4)

What started off with just politics and biased policymaking, led to inflammatory rhetoric, frustration and desperation, ultimately descending to terrorism and the resounding indoctrination across the nation that ethnicity was pitted ethnicity in a full-blown civil war. (5)

So like white people starting to give that black cop credit, as they should. But I’m still not sure they get it, so let me explain a little more succinctly, the play by play that likely happened in that mans mind.

He realized that the entire seat of power of the US govt was I defended, as was he, with no backup, when he looked over his shoulder. That he was the last line of defense, between the barbarians storming the capital. These barbarians, being racist white nazis.

And in that moment, when all of his training kicked in? And he made the heroic split second decision to save the senators lives, and delay as best he could? You know what he realized his absolute BEST weapon was? In that SPLIT SECOND?

It wasn’t his service weapon. His badge, his training. Lol it was the fact he was a BLACK man in front of a racist mob. Nothing else mattered, nothing else would be as effective. And he KNEW that, so fathom what that means for someone defending said racist country

With his life. Lol his gun wouldn’t help save these white elected officials, many of whom had directed this white mob against him...he knew the deep burning racism of said white mob, would be enough, on seeing a black man to forget what they even stormed the capital for.

So, I was asked to write down my thoughts on the coup for a major newspaper earlier this week.

I told them no, and let me tell you why.

In 2016, after the election I wrote an op-ed on white nationalism and the alt-right for a major newspaper and appeared on MSNBC.

I was hyped to have the opportunity to share my expertise with a wider audience.

I wasn't prepared for what came next.

The op-ed was shared pretty widely. It is probably as close as I've come to a viral piece.

I wrote for a prestigious pub, and people were reading about my scholarly research.

Cool, right?

Not quite.

The day the op-ed was published I was at an amusement park with my partner, two kids, nephew and niece, one of my sisters and her partner.

While waiting on the kids to get off a ride, I started getting messages from folks asking if I was okay.

I was confused. Why wouldn't I be okay?

Well, then, folks were like, "Uh, there are some pretty nasty threats being lobbed at you on Twitter."

1/ GameStop is one of the most fun businesses to study for both its success and failure.

Relative to other specialty retailers, it dominated up until the financial crisis, but has since done very poorly.

But unlike Tower Records or Blockbuster, it is still in business

2/ Thanks to the tailwind gaming has provided, its revenues have grown long-term but EBITDA and margins have been terrible as the gaming world has digitized over the past 5 years.

3/ As I learned in @joosterizer book One Up, their early physical retail edge rested on counterpositioning: doing things Walmart and others couldn't:

1. Accessibility
2. Deeply trained expert staff
3. Tailored loyalty program
4. Custom inventory management for used game sales

4/ Accessibility

There are 5,500 GameStop stores, often more than one in the same mall (mostly because of EB acquisition). Can always find one.

They install ramps--not for wheelchairs, but for strollers because parents are the real buyer

5/ Trained Staff

As @joosterizer told me recently, try to go into a GameStop and stump a staff member. They can help you navigate much better than a generic retail employee. Creates loyalty and trust that wouldn't be possible if they didn't just focus so specifically on games.

Thread – A Survey of the Current Situation

1. The media (99%), the FBI, and the Justice Department, and most judges in federal judiciary seem fully complicit in protecting those guilty of the most massive corruption and sedition in American history.

The Amazons of Dahomey.

It is noon on a humid Saturday in the fall of 1861, and a missionary by the name of Francesco Borghero has been summoned to a parade ground in Abomey, the capital of the small West African state of Dahomey.

He is seated on one side of a huge, open square right in the center of the town–Dahomey is renowned as a “Black Sparta,” a fiercely militaristic society bent on conquest, whose soldiers strike fear into their enemies all along what is still known as the Slave Coast.

The maneuvers begin in the face of a looming downpour, but King Glele is eager to show off the finest unit in his army to his European guest.
As Father Borghero fans himself, 3,000 heavily armed soldiers march into the square and begin a mock assault on a series of defenses...

designed to represent an enemy capital. The Dahomean troops are a fearsome sight, barefoot and bristling with clubs and knives. A few, known as Reapers, are armed with gleaming three-foot-long straight razors, each wielded two-handed and capable, the priest is told, of slicing...

a man clean in two.
The soldiers advance in silence, reconnoitering. Their first obstacle is a wall—huge piles of acacia branches bristling with needle-sharp thorns, forming a barricade that stretches nearly 440 yards.

Pelosi's mot that the chose "their whiteness over democracy" disappoints me. 1/

It disturbs me when liberals recourse to racism as a universal explanation for everything bad the right does. It's reductionist. And it's not to excuse the right and its racism to point this out... 2/

In fact, reducing everything bad the right believes and does to white supremacy limits our grasp of their terribleness: in most cases in's white supremacy PLUS (and in some cases, NOT white supremacy. Non-white conservative tradition deserve consideration on its own terms). /3

a major part of the PLUS is gender-based. In the late 1970s, the ideology that cohered the Christian right, and made them such a force in Reagan's coalition and beyond, was far more eliminationist rage against LGBT people than racism. /4

Most of the people traveling to DC to protest IRS rules on Christian schools in 1979, many of them former segregationists, were witnesses to their eliminationist rage against LGBT people (conspiracy theories held the IRS sought to force Christian schools to hire gay teachers). /5

1. Short thread - on the various claims we're seeing from Republican politicians over the last few days that the Democratic push for accountability is "divisive." Damn right it's divisive - that is what it has to be.

2. It is intended to enforce a clear division between those who accept and are committed to democracy and those who are willing to turn to violence when the vote doesn't turn out the way that they want it to.

3. One of the basic implications of Adam Przeworski's theoretic work is that democracy is made out of mutually reinforcing expectations, and those expectations are fragile. If some actors think they would be better off defecting from the democratic bargain, they will.

4. In other words: democracy and armed factionalism are far closer than we think, or we would like them to be. This means that it is incredibly important to police the boundaries between them. Allowing some to turn to violence can lead to expectation collapse and cascading ruin.

5. When we allow the divisions to become blurred, that means that we are running the perpetual risk of things getting fucked up. If a major faction turns to violence, and no-one responds, things can get really fucked up really, really fast.

Here's our Sunday Wrapup
- Our 2021 Spring Previews are out (will be linked below
- Bike shortages will be a real thing this year. We're already feeling it with some brands.
- We're upset/scared/frustrated about Covid, and are limiting appointments to urgent repairs only.

City Bike Preview--> Breezer, @VSFManufaktur, @gazellebikesusa
Affordable transportation. Reliable & built to last (with 10 year warranties). Fun and easy to ride every day.

Gazelle E-bike Preview--> Ultimate Series (Completely Amaazing, and new!), Medeo Series (sporty and fun), Upright Series (Maximum Dutchiness).
--
Good availability on most models, limited availability on Arroyo Elite and EasyFlow

Family Cargo Bike Preview--> @ternbicycles @UrbanArrowcom @larryvsharry @babboe_bakfiets
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So many amazing choices to have fun with your family while getting stuff done. Our family is rolling with a Larry vs Harry Bullitt, and a Tern GSD in 2021.

Cargo Bikes for Business -->
This is a new opportunity for local businesses to take advantage of an incredible $2000 grant toward an electric cargo bike. We're here to consult with you on the best way to move your business forward, on a

1/42 Good to see yesterday’s @thetimes editorial attacking the pandemic of covid misinformation. Here’s my twitter contribution to fighting it, as suggested. Lockdown and covid sceptics continue to consistently misuse cherry picked data to argue NHS not unusually busy.

2/42 NHS trust leaders believe this disinformation is profoundly disrespectful to staff and risks reducing vital compliance with restrictions on social contact. Below is a long two part thread answering the main "NHS not unusually busy" and other NHS related disinformation.

3/42 Much of the disinformation comes from simplistic year on year percentage comparisons of data. Some types of NHS demand are flat or lower year on year. But it’s a huge distortion to argue that these individual statistics mean the NHS is not unusually busy.

4/42 For example, there ARE much lower levels of winter flu year - a global phenomenon. There ARE fewer elective operations - because of covid pressures. And there are many other examples. But there are five problems with cherry-picking/using these individual datasets.

5/42 1. They do not capture anything like the current total level of NHS demand which is very differently shaped due to COVID-19. Traditional, existing, NHS datasets were built to reflect “normal” levels of demand, “normal” operations and "normal" capacity. This isn’t normal.

1/21 The pros and cons of cryptocurrencies with an immutable, decentralized, public blockchain, why banks aren't going away, and what that means for XRP.

A thread. 👇

2/21 When I got into crypto, one of the first things I learned was that the blockchain is immutable. Once something is stored on it, it can't be changed. Once you decide to make a transaction, nobody can reverse your decision, not even the State. This gives you real power.

3/21 The blockchain is also public. Anyone with the right software can view every transaction on it. This keeps people honest and builds trust b/c everyone knows everyone else can audit the blockchain and ensure everything is on the up-and-up.

4/21 A good blockchain is also decentralized. No individual, company or State can exert control over it independently. Without consensus, things cant't change, and that kind of monetary stability is exactly what we need to stop the current brrrrr of inflationary money printing.

5/21 Crypto also offers you the ability to "be your own bank". You don't have to pay high fees or keep your money in inflationary fiat that's losing value every year. Want to send money to another country? Open an app and make it happen. Fast, cheap, no bank required.

🍑🧵Our voting rights litigation was instrumental to winning Georgia in the 2020 election. As a result of our lawsuits, over 3,000 ballots were cured statewide. The post-cure rejection rate DECREASED by 6% since 2016. How did we get there?

On behalf of the @dscc, @dccc and @GeorgiaDemocrat, we sued and obtained a favorable settlement with the state regarding #GA's signature matching laws and Gwinnett County's absentee ballot design. Why was this so important? (2/16)


Up until our settlement, VBM ballots were being thrown out in #GA for no lawful reason due to standard-less signature matching processes that failed to notify voters. As I warned in my #FourPillars, signature matching laws drive disenfranchisement.

Under the terms of the settlement, #GA agreed to provide prompt notification of absentee ballot rejections and increased signature matching regulations and trainings. Gwinnett County also adopted a clearer absentee ballot envelope design in the settlement. BIG wins!🥳 (4/16)

Our victory was critical in the face of #COVID19. Like other states, #GA experienced a giant surge in VBM. Our settlement installed stronger guardrails against VBM disenfranchisement and set the tone for what states had to do to protect their voters amid the pandemic. (5/16)

Imagine if, in the midst of the massive BLM riots this summer, the entire tech infrastructure had deplatformed Facebook because some had used that app to plan events devolving into violence. People would rightly have called that an insane act of ideological fascism.

Yet today, media will celebrate Amazon doing exactly that to Parler. The tech bros are making a horrible and dangerous moment significantly more horrible and dangerous. There are no consistent standards being applied. There is reactionary deplatforming in the name of one side.

Private companies are by law free to do what they like. That’s why I have always said that the solution to the censorship of Twitter is alternatives -- which is what Parler was attempting to be, whatever its flaws.

But when the technological instruments necessary for speech are located in essentially three companies, all of which are moving toward like-minded censorship (Amazon controls about half of all public-cloud infrastructure, Microsoft 16%, and Google 4%), that avenue closes.

I am by nature anti-regulation. But even the consumer-based theory of anti-monopoly championed by free market advocates cuts in favor of anti-monopolistic regulation if these companies are acting in de facto collusion to shut all avenues of dissent.