It's true that a sufficiently high UBI could serve as an alternative to a $15 minimum wage, but I personally would prefer a combo of both plus a 4-day 32-hour week. Let's pay people more for work, support all unpaid work, and distribute employment and leisure time more equitably.

What the left needs to be honest about in regards to a $15 min wage is that although the overall effects will likely be positive, there will be impacts like reduced hours to compensate. Let's lean into that by leaving the 5-day 40-hour week behind. Every weekend should be 3 days.

It's also likely that a higher min wage will increase automation. Great! Let's do that! But that means less employment for humans. 4-day weeks share the available employment better, and universal basic income makes automation literally work for

UBI makes sure that micro-level responses to a higher minimum wage don't reduce people's total incomes if hours drop, or drop incomes to zero. For that person who can't find a job to pay them $15/hr, they can have $1500/mo vs $0. And unpaid workers would have $1500/mo vs $0 too.

If all we did was redefine full-time as 32 hours, businesses would need to pay more per hour so that employees got paid the same for less time. That would distribute leisure time better and I think raise productivity, but it wouldn't raise total incomes, which need to be raised.

THREAD:  A few quick thoughts on #Navalny and why the Kremlin opted for such a harsh sentence. 1/10

Ever since news broke about the failed assassination attempt last August it’s been clear the security services have been operating according with very simple logic.  2/10

The overriding goal was to destroy Navalny and to demonstrate that no move aimed against the security services would remain unpunished.  3/10

Thus, there was no way for the authorities to accept that Navalny could return and operate freely against Putin and the security establishment in the new political conditions created by the fact of the assassination attempt. 4/10

The current ruling is only the first part of a saga.The Kremlin has plenty of other potential criminal charges it can bring against Navalny.The goal is to make Navalny—and others-realize that they face the prospect of spending the rest of their lives behind bars. 5/10

Weaver, Joseph and Young apparently have no understanding of what it means to have a "holistic discussion" on homelessness.

That's not me saying it... that's literally what they are saying in a scheduling meeting now about the followup to Tuesday's meeting.

"I don’t really comprehend what that means bc in the end we make discrete decisions. ... I don’t understand what a holistic (discussion)

Council decided last week that camps will keep being removed BUT they didn't weigh in on staff's recommendations for more enforcement. Members Brockett/Friend said they didn't want to vote on those without also considering more services....

....which might reduce the need for removals.

Basically, you can spend on removals or you can spend on services. So to uncouple these discussions doesn't make sense, they argued.

Council members will be polled about when they want this Part 2 meeting to be, but Weaver and Joseph are both in favor of later. Council needs time to "digest," they said. So possibly March or later.

Ideology matters, folks. I've been publicly calling Republicans a fascist party bc their only consistent ideological position is white power. Their 180° reversals on debt & national security underscore the point & make them especially dangerous. No "compromise" will fix this.

I am deeply worried that white Dems, & white folks more broadly, don't understand this point—that our national religion of whiteness will lead white Americans to embrace a neo-redemptionist politics. Nothing could be more dangerous.

The original politics of "redemption" came after the Civil War when white Americans from #bothsides found common cause in white power—suppressing migrant, white women's, & especially Black rights. This "reunion" of Rebel & U.S. soldiers at Gettysburg is a classic of the genre.

The term itself—"redemption"—comes from the white paramilitary units who sought to "redeem" their states from "Negro rule" by murdering their political opponents, especially Black southerners.

Lots of quibbling on this point, but as a historian of this movement, I think it would be correct to call theirs a proto-fascist movement.

My dear law students, I know that the events in Brisbane are at the top of your minds, so I will jump on the bandwagon and talk about one aspect of this wonderful test series that appealed to me. Right through the series, we have seen the role of fortune in a player’s success.

Rishabh Pant escaped a stumping before he went on to win the game for India in Brisbane. In Melbourne, Ajinkya Rahane was dropped before he went on to make a hundred. But is it not the case that we give these players credit for their achievements despite their fortune?

We also hold these players responsible even if what happened was their misfortune. India’s 36 in Adelaide was a collective failure no doubt but it was also a perfect cocktail of bad luck-pitch, conditions, and all the Australian bowlers managing to get their line & length right.

That’s test cricket, but we might say that’s life in general. Luck, good and bad, plays an important role in how the world judges us. We might go further and say that the law reflects life in this respect.

When I look at the way the law apportions responsibility, I am amazed that there is widespread acceptance of the system. Take the law of negligence that all of you study in the first year. The law of negligence establishes an objective standard of care.

Christmas Eve does not feel to me like the ideal time to be trashing Ravi Zacharias. But neither should RZIM control the story line over the holiday. I offer these thoughts on their admission yesterday that Ravi “engaged in sexual misconduct over the course of many years.”

First, the worst of Ravi is yet to come. RZIM law firm said in a letter to their client “Some of that misconduct is consistent with and corroborative of that which is reported in the news recently, and some of the conduct we have uncovered is MORE SERIOUS.” (my CAPS). Stay tuned.

Second, I was wrong when I publicly stated that the RZIM investigation would be a whitewash. Clearly the ministry has committed to letting at least *some* of the ugly truth about Ravi Zacharias be known.
This is a dramatic and welcome change from the very recent past.

That said, I do not trust RZIM any more than I did the day before yesterday. $40,000,000 in annual donations is at stake, not to mention the personal reputations of Ravi’s loyal and long-term enablers, who remain in power at RZIM. Their game continues.

Yesterday RZIM said “Unfortunately, Ravi had died several months before we first learned of these allegations, so we were unable to explore them with him directly.” Are we to believe that nobody in RZIM leadership had any idea that Ravi was a serial sex abuser?

Cliff breakdown.
🇺🇸

Let’s talk about “the mark of the beast.”

Every time some new vaccine becomes necessary, there’s a small-but-loud group of evangelicals and otherwise who believe taking this vaccine could be “pledging your allegiance to the devil.” But does this have any grounds in The Bible?

The so-called “mark of the beast” appears in The Revelation, so first we’ve gotta dispel some myths about the book as a whole.

I’d argue that if there’s one book that has been twisted most heavily by the “evangelical fanfiction lore” of the 80s and 90s, it’s gotta be Revelation.

American Christianity in the 90s was wack. After years of politicians stoking fears of communism & new world order, conservatives snowballed their vision of what “the apocalypse” would look like, and reverse-engineered their fears back into Revelation with stuff like Left Behind.

The Left Behind books were pretty critical to the end-times fearmongering. Even Liberty University’s Jerry Falwell said at the time, "in terms of its impact on Christianity, Left Behind is probably greater than that of any other book in modern times, outside The Bible.”

Meanwhile, Theologian David Carlson said, “Left Behind promotes a skewed view of the Christian faith that welcomes war and disaster, while dismissing peace efforts in the Middle East and elsewhere—all in the name of Christ.”

https://t.co/gfXjaJF2tc New study re the views of nonautistic people towards autistic individuals. The aim - to move away from negative stereotypes.
But the 'sample fictional autistic person' is a white male who likes to only talk about fantasy fiction (LOTR).
Er.../

OK, that describes about 1% of autistic people.
And it exactly matches the stereotype myth that all autistic people are like this.
But...if the aim is to improve how people respond to autistic people...how does this fictional character help?/

My concern is that the more we focus on that 1%, the more we a) forget the other 99% exist and b) the more we set people up to fail, on encountering us. I cannot begin to tell you how confused people are that I'm not a young male who can only talk about Sci-Fi & IT, for example/

...and teaching people how to think positive thoughts about a white male fantasy-fiction-fan doesn't get them anywhere when asked to collaborate with a middle aged gay mum. Let alone one who can manage a decent chat on almost any standard topic on earth/

As it happens, I can chat about LOTR, and IT. But probably no more than anyone else on the street.
If we're serious about improving autistic lives, we need to be serious about diversity.

They found his car, parked on the bridge between two towns, the brown sooty water of the Ohio passing beneath. After they issued his description two welders working on the bridge remember seeing a man in a topcoat and hat. /1

Friends say he was despondent. His mother had died just a few weeks before, and everyone said his was such a kind, gentle soul. His sisters already knew the worse. They understood Jimmy just as their mother had. 2/

There was no "indian summer" that year. October came in cold, stayed cold, and blew into a cold November. The local police weren't enough, so they called in the Coast Guard to drag the river. 3/

There was only time. Time to wait, but not to worry, only to find out. When they, a sister took to her bed, another retreated to her books, and my mother, the youngest, had to keep it from all falling apart. She was his kid sister, and the adoration was mutual. 4/

She kept the story from her own youngest son, who was only four. When she spoke of him at all, she simply said that he died, honey, and that he was sad. When her son was older, long left, she sent him a photo. 5/

County Board of Supervisors January 26,2021 In progress: I had a doctor's appointment. Diagnosis Twitter Thumb ;) Can watch meeting here

2.1 *Authorize the Board of Supervisors to sign a letter to Governor Newsom with Urgent Request for
Additional Vaccine Pacheco says County now is doing 30,000 shots a week. We are now efficient after so issues at start.

Magisg: local control is always best. California had been challenged to get the shots out to counties. (EDITORIAL ALTHOUGH I heard on radio that counties have been uneven in their approach too. ). Magisg: appreciates the team the county had.

Local control is better. Mendes was on a call a few weeks ago and he thinks Governor is out of touch.The higher you go up the chain the more out of touch they are. Brand: CAO modified one sentence from the letter. We are ahead of the game butter great work will

falter if we don't get more vaccines. (That was Brandau and not Brand). Public:Leslie from Leadership Counsel thought the farmworker event yesterday was great. If we need to lobby Governor let us know. Brandua: please get Arambula involved

Careful in categorizing historical (& contemporary) movements as "anarchist" vs "Marxist" (unless they explicitly ID as such). There are numerous revolutionary movements and socialist societies that do not fit neatly in this dichotomy. Not only is it implicitly Eurocentric,

1/

but it risks fundamentally misapplying concepts which do not actually befit the nature of a given historical society/movement.

We learn from Marxist methodology that each revolutionary situation or political-economic organization of a given society is historically specific,

2/

bounded by social forces rooted in (but not *reducible to*) the productive technologies and relationships formed in dialectic with them. Far from precluding human agency, this approach allows for history to be read in an open and rich way. To say that history and economy have

3/

so-called 'laws of motion', as in the realm of physics, does not imply a fatalistic framework (as an aside: the mind-bending complexities shown in chaos theory, even in such 'simple' cases as the double pendulum, are still strictly deterministic; nevertheless,

4/

the sheer magnitude of possible paths from such a 'simple' two-particle system as the double-pendulum alone, demonstrate that even with ostensibly 'perfect' knowledge about a system, the possible outcomes are myriad).

The act of interpreting history thus demands an

5/

There are times in church we must yield to the move of the Spirit simply because there are certain things He wants to handle personally.

I once attended a church where if sin and hell isn’t preached, the service was not considered “hot”.

The Pastor was a good man but he really wanted to bring people to Christ but his approach was worrisome.

He would bring up certain OT teachings and tie it to issues church members were facing.

After the service, everyone was somber and “cut to the heart”.

People would come for altar call but after that service, you won’t see them again.

“The wages of sin is death...” and under my breath, I’ll whisper “and the gift of God is everlasting life”.

The church wasn’t growing and even the ministers were weary.

I was weary too because I saw the Pastor’s heart and I knew he just wanted to do well for the Master.

I asked the Holy Spirit to help us because on many levels, the church wasn’t meeting up.

The Holy Spirit said “On Sunday, I’ll show you something simple yet profound”.

On Sunday, a brother who was made an altar minister was to preach in the Pastor’s absence.

He was a sound teacher and a man of both the Word and the Spirit.

He started with a song and everywhere changed. Immediately, the Holy Spirit said “Pay Attention”.

I did.

Some initial thoughts on the disability discrimination section of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission Report. First, more work is needed to seek out & respect the views of disabled people themselves, and especially those who experienced these settings firsthand.

The report does not focus in depth on many settings in which disabled people were detained (e.g. psychiatric hospitals, residential disability institutions), so it’s clearly not a full picture of the human rights violations experienced by disabled people on this issue.

The report shows the flow of disabled people between mother and baby homes, psychiatric hospitals, county homes, Magdalene laundries & specialist disability services. This deserves more attention - who was responsible for admission/discharge decisions? What criteria did they use?

On the issue of consent of disabled mothers to place their children for adoption – the report shows that often, where disabled mothers made the ‘right’, socially acceptable choice; that is, to place the child for adoption, then they were often deemed to have capacity to decide.

When disabled mothers resisted the adoption of their children, and were perceived to be making the ‘wrong’ decision, many were found to lack capacity to decide. Critical analysis of the subjective, value-laden nature of these capacity assessments is missing from the report.