The latest sex abuse scandal to rock France seems to be reinforcing one important thing: French public opinion reaction to stories of sexual abuse is changing in significant ways. (A

I noticed it first about ten years ago, some years before the #metoo movement, when rape allegations were made against then IMF-Director Dominique Strauss-Khan.

When the head of a major French publishing house Vanessa Springora wrote about being groomed and abused as a teen by feted French novelist Gabriel Matzneff, it caused revulsion and soul-searching throughout the country. (Read her fantastic book “Consent”)

Instacart is a great example of a company that as it exists today is a interim, not end state business. There will be opportunities to change that positioning, but they will face some critical choices ahead.

Supermarkets are built purposely in prominent locations to catch retail eye & the layout is designed to offer a wide range of SKUs while drawing attention to the highest margin and/or velocity ones.

1st problem: the supermarket's sprawling layout is suboptimally designed for efficiently picking & packing your order.

2nd problem: Instacart doesn't have perfect visibility into the SKUs at a given supermarket in a given day, so the inefficiency for a picker is twofold-can't find items, then have to wait for your approval for replacement goods before checking out.

So what is Instacart? The two things they do efficiently are:

1) own the customer & monetize the data that comes along w/ that.

2) Efficiently deliver last mile logistics.

Some thoughts on remote working...

Remote makes communication skills more critical. Some of this is valuable anyway (clarity, conciseness, logical structure) but can be compensated for with co-location. Some of this is easy with co-location but becomes difficult with remote (non-verbal cues, humanisation).

Externalise everything. People can't read your mind, especially with reduced non-verbal cues, nor can they remember everything. Get it of your head into something other people can interact with. Words and pictures, not just words. Logical structure, not just a freeform dump.

No unwritten rules (GitLab), AKA a simpler expression of Kanban's "make process policies explicit".

Distribute decision-making with decision rules/guard rails. This is an example of "no unwritten rules". At larger scales, I expect "just trust people to make good decisions" leading to either a mess or indecision.

Thread: 1/10

What surviving my first bereaved Christmas taught me about handling Christmas in a pandemic:

Mindset: Christmas is nostalgia, tradition, togetherness. But it's also just one day. When things get tough tomorrow, remember this is a Friday & a big chicken dinner.

2/10

Expectations: Let yourself feel what you feel. It is beyond sh*t that people will be alone & that families are separated this Christmas. You don't have to pretend. It's ok to be sad, angry, resentful. Let yourself feel what you feel without expectation to feel otherwise.

3/10

No guilt: It's also ok to have fun on the day. To laugh, smile & enjoy lovely moments even though you miss a relative who can't be with you in order to keep safe from the virus. No guilt. Allow those moments. For you can hold both sadness & joy at the same time.

4/10

Chunk it down: This Christmas Day may feel very long when you're lonely for loved ones who are in another house. Think of the day in sections. Have a focus for each section. Focus only on the section in front of you. Breakfast. Walk. Video call loved ones. Dinner. Movie.

5/10

Allow for differences: Not everyone handles things the same, so don't judge others if they're dealing with the day differently to you tomorrow. Let everyone get through this strangest Christmas Day the best they can. Let everyone find their own way.

SOUTHERN KADUNA PEOPLE'S UNION YOUTH WING.

Press Statement

ENOUGH OF THE BIGOTRY AND SENSELESS ATTACKS ON BISHOP MATHEW HASSAN KUKAH.

The attention of the Youth Wing of Southern kaduna People's Union (SOKAPU) has again been drawn to an eleven (11) point press statement issued

and signed by one Professor Isa Mohammed Maishanu on behalf of Muslim Solidarity Forum Sokoto on Tuesday the 12th day of January 2021, asking Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah to leave the Seat of Caliphate (Sokoto), and also trying to incite the peace loving people of Sokoto and the

North against the Bishop over his Christmas message where the Bishop out of passionate patriotism voiced out the obvious truth when he said " Every honest Nigerian knows that there is no way any Non-Nothern Muslim President could have done a fraction of what President Buhari has

done with his Nepotism and gotten away with it."

We are however dismayed and pained that a Professor will condescend this low, throwing caution to the wind and towing the path of religious rascality and bigotry by deliberately attempting to window dressed the Bishop's message

with religious colorations and further inciting the general Muslim Ummah against the Bishop.

The demeaning call by the so-called Professor for Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah to "apologise to the Muslim Ummah or quickly and quietly leave the Seat of the Caliphate" is not just

Can young trans activists please remember that most of the trans rights attributed to the Equality Act 2010 (specifically employment and vocational eduction) have been in British law far longer than those mere 11 years. These rights stem form a ruling 25 years ago in 1996.

This is IMPORTANT. I’m not just being picky. The narrative against our rights hinges on the suggestion that they are ‘new’ or radical, rather than having been largely settled since before some of the detractors were born. Non-discrimination was formally written into the..

..Sex Discrimination Act by regulations in 1999. The only thing not covered at that time was discrimination in the supply of goods and services, owing to a loophole which Labour decided to rely on. Never these, the 1999 regulations covered almost everything lately in contention..

..because reliably protecting employment rights had to include dealing with issues in sex-specific care and in shared sleeping and changing accommodation for staff who sleep in or change at work. The Equality Act 2010 merely burnished protections that had already existed..

..without issue for 12 years in 2010 by carrying forward everything contained in the amended Sex Discrimination Act and other prime non-discrimination acts. Challenges against trans protection in EA2010 — literally pretending they’re something new — are based on a lie.

NEW from me:

Two Christian right organizers of rallies and marches promoting "stolen election" and "election fraud" lies worked for the U.S. Department of Health and Human

The main rally, the Jericho March, held on the National Mall on Dec. 12, helped lay the groundwork for Jan.

The Jericho March organizers partnered with Ali Alexander and Stop the Steal, which was later at the center of the Jan. 6 insurrection.

#capitolsiegereligion

Other rally speakers included Oath Keepers' Stewart Rhodes and conspiracist Alex Jones, both, who according to new reporting from the @nytimes last night and the @wsj this morning, were at the center of the Capitol insurrection.

NYT, on

Most pasmanda who are not familiar with the caste equations in muslim society often try and emulate Ashraf when they achieve social status through professional achievements.
(Thread)

I wish to narrate the story of my maternal Grand Father, who came from modest household of a cloth seller. Being prodigious in studies, he rose to become HoD Urdu and Persian Dept, Langat Singh College (Bihar University).

This brought him in close proximity with Ashraf intellectual class and they made every effort to discover his caste but since his name was caste neutral, it helped him conceal his identity.
When he was a fresh appointee, he once travelled to Gorakhpur with senior professors

and entire journey they kept cursing Ansaris. He did not utter a word.
When he finally became Professor and HoD, he was very vocally against Ashraf dominance and didnt cut them any slack. He gave them better than he got in his struggling years.

This earned him great many enemies. It became common parlance that if one sees my Granfather's face in morning that Ashraf wont get two meals a day. (Basically call him manhus) This is something advocated commonly against Pasmanda.

thread/

tomorrow is holocaust memorial day. it’s not the jewish day of commemoration. that is later on in the year. it is a day for the non-jewish world to consider the memory of the holocaust and what it means to them.

i’m wondering a lot lately about what the holocaust means to non-jews, considering how much it’s been divorced and decontextualized from jewish storytelling.

from where i’m standing the non-jewish world fetishises the holocaust to use it as a metaphor for bad things; things that don’t need a holocaust comparison in order to be understood as bad.

it makes me sick. why? the holocaust is in recent memory for jews. it is a horror that disproportionately affected jews. it is a historic atrocity that attempted to end jewish life on earth, and it took far too many jewish lives to bear thinking about. we have to think about it.

if we don’t think about it, we let those souls perish forever and we let go of the duty we have to ensure ‘never again’.

A lot of the conversation revolves around Nazis & yes, let’s hate Nazis. But that’s easy. More people need to focus on loving, supporting, & standing up for Jewish people. Antisemitic people aren’t only out-in-the-open white supremacists. Antisemitism is everywhere. 1/10

Punching Nazis, again, great-they’re trash that deserve a good throat punch -but it does nothing to solve the problem of antisemitism. Start by looking at yourself and understand the ways in which you, yes you, perpetuate antisemitic stereotypes. 2/10

Stand up for us when you hear other people perpetuating those stereotypes. Do more than just say “oh, sad” every time a synagogue or Jewish cemetery is vandalized (which is often). 3/10

Educate yourself. Regurgitating that 6m Jews were murdered during the Holocaust isn’t enough. How did it get to that point? They didn’t just start killing Jews. Years of propaganda & scapegoating- by the time Jews were dragged from their homes, their neighbors didn’t care. 4/10

Do you know anything else about the history of the Jewish people? That the Black Plague was blamed on Jews? A conspiracy that Jews were poisoning the wells? They burnt Jews alive. Jews always required to live in their own areas (Jewish Ghettos) throughout European history. 5/10

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.

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.

the united states has convinced do many people that MLK day is a day of service. MLK wasn't interested in "service," he was interested in the redistribution of wealth to render poverty obsolete. Less service, more redistribution

He was called “the most dangerous man in America” by the FBI, not because he was interested in community service, but because he was promoting anti-militarism and anti-capitalism

He was organizing a poor people's campaign to use direct action against the US government for maintaining economic inequality, not to "help out poor people," but to end the idea of poor people

On militarism and

on his frustration with white moderates and the church who didn't like his nonviolent direct action to fight for

I was asked to tell my story. so here we go. Long story short version.

1)My Muslim neighbours. 12 years. The 1st few years were good. Broke bread. Many discussions over coffee on the deck. Kids were young, in school. Then the oldest boy married a girl from Lebanon, had children, who I loved with all my heart. And they loved me.

2)Oldest girl off to University in Edmonton. Social Justice studies. THAT’S when things started to change. Went to work for Omar Khadr’s lawyer. I noticed things. The little ones were not allowed to come and visit me. Hug me. They would whisper in Arabic right in front of me.

3)I was like WTF is going on here? Then 2nd son married a Russian Muslim. Many problems with getting her here to Canada. Offered a lot of moral support through that. When I welcomed her and her child, she turned away and went in the house. 🤔🤷🏻‍

4) I talked with my other neighbour about the changes. She had been a VERY good friend of Zalfa’s. Zalfa did not wear a hijab, wore jeans, sweatshirts. THEN. New Imam. Over night. Hijab, Arabic dress, etc. Wouldn’t go to her house. Kids not allowed over if they had eaten pork.

The new pooled testing initiation for MA schools is a game changer. Looking forward to seeing how this is going to roll out. Initial plans seem to call for pooled PCR testing for classes, followed by rapid antigen testing for pools that are positive. 1/

This is NOT exactly what colleges are doing. MA colleges are screening with individual testing, not pooled testing. BTW, this has been very successful. It's not just screening, it's also going all in on tracing, isolation, distancing, masks, education. 2/

But no question that infection rates are much lower than the general population. Check out this graph from Dec 19. Percent positivity is much lower in higher ed.

I don't think this is because college students stay at home all day and never have risky social interactions! 3/

But there are a LOT more K-12 students than college students. So use of pooled PCR tests is crucial to keep costs down. Also intrigued by the proposed use of rapid antigen tests to find the infectious member of a positive pool. 4/ @michaelmina_lab

One of the lessons from higher ed is that regular PCR testing is really the best test to detect asymptomatic infection, which will be even more common in K-12 than college-aged students. 5/ @mbebinger @RanuDhillon

@LetsTalkZorro @zjcat7 @Julie76983198 @ggbrokensilence
1. Why did Epstein want Zorro Ranch?
* 23 miles away is Santa Fe.
"This was once a drugstore, Zook’s Pharmacy, that doubled as a base for Russian espionage; in between filling prescriptions and ringing up customers, deep

2. cover Stalinist spies here plotted the death of Leon Trotsky and later coordinated efforts to steal the secrets of the atomic bomb from Los Alamos (distance from Zorro Ranch: 50 miles)"
*There’s the Armand Hammer United World College of the American West, a selective

3. international boarding school in Montezuma founded by Armand Hammer and PRINCE CHARLES, originally a resort hotel built on a hot springs sacred to the Jicarilla Apache, the previous inhabitants of the Sangre De Cristos
*There are also the sites where the Catholic Church hid

4. pedophile priests in local parishes, until a tsunami of lawsuits from victims forced New Mexico’s largest diocese to file for bankruptcy last June. One of those places is in Jemez Springs (Distance from Zorro Ranch: 50 miles.)

5. Here, the Catholic Church still operates one of two treatment centers in the United States for pedophile priests
* A little over 80 miles northwest of Zorro Ranch is Trementina Base, a bunker and vault complex owned by the Church of Spiritual Technology—an elite order within