1/ Merry Christmas everyone! I'm a very odd and eccentric person, so after some Yuletide joy and wine drinking, my thoughts turn to what archaeologists of the future might make of my remains if I were to die in a sudden disaster, like the Vesuvius eruption.
(Quick disclaimer...

2/ I'm not an archaeologist - just someone who takes a keen amateur interest in these things)
After, let's say, a thousand years, and without very particular conditions of preservation that are unlikely in this climate, it's likely that all skin, gristle and textiles would have

3/ rotted into nothingness.
So, what's left?
My bones.
Presuming they're in a decent state of preservation, archaeologists would be able to tell from my brow ridges and gracile bones that I was probably a natal woman.
The eruption of my wisdom teeth and the condition of my

4/ pelvis would indicate I was 30-50 years old at time of death and had had at least one child.
Analysis of bones would indicate I had a land based diet, lived in N. Europe and was well-nourished. Lack of joint wear and tear shows I had undertaken no strenuous physical labour.

5/ What else would be left of me... most likely the sparkly beads on my clothes - both on the collar of my dress and my cardigan. They're made of gum/plastic - made to imitate gems, but very cheap. In the far future, finds like this would be plentiful. Archaeologists would likely

I ran across a quote a long time ago, and it's stuck with me:

“Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives.”
— Charlie Munger


This talk is both in transcript form and there's a YouTube audio of it as well.

I like this quote from Munger:

"I think I’ve been in the top 5% of my age cohort all my life in understanding the power of incentives, and all my life I’ve underestimated it. And never a year passes, but I get some surprise that pushes my limit a little farther."

So now, like a mad monkey who has just discovered the hammer, I will now go around using this tool of incentives and perverse incentives on everything. Maybe I'll get lucky and hit a few actual nails.

At root, I think the riots at the capitol are the result of a synergy of perverse incentives in politics, mass media, and social media, and they all contribute to a perfect storm of dysfunction. Maybe this is obvious to everyone, and I'm just catching up. But whatever. Here goes.

🧵THREAD🧵
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction." - Reagan

Reasons not to do it

I’ve recently been reading through “The Butchering Art”, a terrific account of 19th century surgery & the introduction of germ theory & anesthesia to Victorian medicine. I highly recommend reading it yourself, but here are some interesting tidbits that caught my attention (1/10)

(2) First, as you can imagine, early surgery was absolutely awful & almost always a last resort. One thing I didn’t realize was that back then, the best surgeons were the *fastest* surgeons — for instance, Robert Liston could remove a leg in less than thirty seconds (!).

(3) Early surgery was limited to “peripheral” conditions, like lacerations & fractures. This is because entering the body in surgery was almost always fatal due to infection. This led to the distinction of physicians practicing “internal medicine”, a term that still persists.

(4) More dangerous than the surgeries were post-operative infections & diseases. Four were particularly common — gangrene, septicemia, pyemia, and erysipelas — & were known as “hospitalism”. With the rise of early anesthesia came a rise in attempted surgeries & hospitalism.

(5) What’s wild about this era, looking back, is that no one really knew what was going on... but their theories made some sense. “Contagionists” thought disease was communicable, being transferred from person to person by “invisible bullets” or chemicals. Not the craziest idea.

THREAD ⚠ :-

THE-NOT-SO-ENTERTAINMENT-INDUSTRY.
One cannot make an omlette without breaking some eggs. The web series or any digital content released time to time is for the purpose of "entertainment" but there are following things that acts an impediment.

The content released becomes a propaganda due to the statements of the artists in public domain. It is not a matter of suppressing Freedom Of Expression by any means but just like a judge who is adviced to never reveal their political biases because it questions their credibility

, the artists should also refrain from commenting on politics or endorsing any hate speech that will force audience to "relate anything to literally anything" resulting in Boycotts. These can also be PR stunts to promote the content but it certainly degrades one's reputation.

The content also influences people's thoughts and perceptions. Movies can control our brains. Artist use their art to shape their viewers, and advance their point of view. To some extent, all art is in the business of manipulating the thoughts and emotions of its audience.

You can google the research about how shows/digital content shapes our views, and is not always limited to "entertainment".

No beating around the bush. I am a Hindu, and it is important to call out hypocrisy of departments.

An Open Letter To: .@KirkCameron

Yesterday, I sat in the parking lot of the James Cancer Center in Columbus, OH and was reduced to an inferno of rage and sadness. I screamed in my car and scared a passerby. I cried, but tried not to so when my husband got back in my eyes were only mildly red.

You see, he had to go into his first post-op colon cancer visit to his liver doctor without me. You read that right, liver doctor. His cancer had traveled to his liver. I like to say "traveled" instead of the common "spread". It makes it sound less threatening to me.

His amazing team used robotics on the 10th to remove three liver tumors. Then they took out the tumor in his colon that was the size of your fist and had closed off the colon. There they removed 24 lymph nodes and yesterday, on the phone with my husband while he sat in a doctor's

office without me in physical form with only my voice through the phone, he heard that 2 of those lymph nodes also had cancer. He heard how he needs to start chemo as soon as possible (mind you it's Christmas, so yay! what a present). And through all of this in "normal times",

You might see an 'essay' going around today about 'the value of knowledge'. I'm not linking it, but I've taken out a few paragraphs that need to be reckoned with. 1/?

From the very first sentence, this person attacks Nikole Hannah Jones and the #1619Project in a typically conservative fashion, no doubt to get the conservative heads to go 'hear, hear!!'. He then says she 'claims' her expertise & essentially says to her 'stay in your lane'. 2/x

Ridiculous assertion aside, Considering this author is someone that routinely criticizes his education program for doing things like setting tasks of making 'BLM bracelets', but then heralds it in his bio, one must wonder how he reckons w/his own lack of expertise. 3/x

He then criticizes Gloria Ladson Billings, another Black woman for pointing out something that is literally true (have you not seen curricula that tell teachers to enact the slave trade? Or that propagate the thanksgiving myth?) 4/x

but does nothing to reckon with the the history of this country, the (failure) to teach Black children, the changes that DO need to be made in curriculum to ensure both rigor and windows and mirrors. 5/x

EVERYTHING SAD IS UNTRUE won the Printz Medal!

Okay I’ve had a minute to take it in, and dance w/my family. But I stayed up last night wondering what would I do with the 15 seconds of attention I'm so grateful to have. I wrote this thread. Hear me out if you would:

It is unfathomable (to me) that a refugee who showed up to this amazing country unable to understand the language would win literary prizes 31 years later.

But it happened! MOM, IT HAPPENED! And glory glory what do I say to you reading this, right now, with my heart overflowing? I don't know, but it was all freely given, so there’s nothing to do but freely give.

Can we try that? As it says in my book, "King or Queen Reader," can we try something together? I figure this is my best week of sales, and an author makes about a dollar per book. So what if we tracked the Bookscan sales for this entire week?

For every book you buy this week, I'll give my dollar to @Heifer a nonprofit that fights global hunger by giving livestock so that impoverished families can create sustainable livelihoods for themselves.

Just finished the bio of Deng Xiaoping by the recently departed Ezra Vogel. Really fascinating book for anyone interested in the foundation of Modern China. I'd argue Deng was the most important statesman in the world from 1950-2000. Many lessons for India. A few takeaways (1/n)

We expect transformative leaders to be grand architects w/ a modernization vision. They should know what changes are crucial. In actuality, most have no clear agenda. Reforms - esp econ. ones - are messy, contradictory, beset by unorthodox ideas mixed in w/ many good ideas (2/n)

Deng & his Communist Party had a nebulous philosophy of "trial by error" & "do what works." Deng's early years as ruling premier were noteworthy for debacles like an economic retrenchment & abrupt cancellation of foreign contracts to husband scarce forex reserves (3/n)

Deng believed in the "population bomb" myth and enacted the 1-Child Law which could hurt China's long-run growth prospects. Deng also quixotically spent much of his country's resources trying to become a petro-state to match Saudi Arabia during the '70s (4/n).

Even Deng's good ideas like special economic zones (SEZs) were rife with problems and accusations of poor implementation. SEZs led to shortages, graft, inflation. Communist leaders demanded an SEZ moratorium and Deng would periodically accede to such demands (5/n)

I had a few Christmas stories that I thought of telling.
I thought of the one about Rocky de Blood with a Teardrop, a homeless lady that my husband picked up on the on-ramp.

Or the story about the Miracle Christmas.

But I think instead I will talk about my Quantum Christmas 🎄

A spiritual jazz thread to chase the evil in this world
1/ Azanyah – The One (1987)
Reissued Jazzman Records

HELEN by Georgette Heyer (Tweet Read #2)
Part I - The Child
Chapter I
II

MILDRED, Mrs Beazley, came on the evening of the following day. (1/14)

She had had no time to buy mourning clothes, as she would have liked to do, but she had found a very dark blue coat and skirt, which she wore in preference to her new green dress. It was more respectful to the dead, she thought. (2/14)

She had been weeping, and as she crossed the hall she tiptoed.
“Oh, James!” she said, and her hushed voice irritated him, “My poor James! Dear Kitty! my only sister! the shock!” Tears choked her; she clung to his hands. (3/14)

“Thank you for coming,” he said. “I would have sent for you before, only… there wasn’t time.”
She was shocked to hear him speak so levelly. She had always thought him cold and unfeeling. “I can’t believe it!” she said. “I can’t! I can’t! She was always so full of life!” (4/14)

“Please!” he said sharply.
“If only I had been here!” For a time she sobbed, muffled, into her handkerchief, while he stood with his back to her, staring out of the window. “To me—such a blow! You’re so brave—I can’t understand it. What you must have gone through!” (5/14)

OK. I'm about to read the #1776Report. I'll see you in Hell.

When a student's essay starts with a word jumble that says absolutely nothing, I know I'm about to have a bad time.

Our purpose is to provide easily regurgitated propaganda that prevents any need for critical thinking.

Hit 'em right off the bat with the positivist bullshit! Any competent historian will smell it on the first page.

Just read the words! You don't need to know the context. In fact, we'd strongly prefer if you never placed any historical facts into context.