Here are 10 questions I'm loosing sleep over regarding asylum at the border:

1) What process will the Biden administration put in place to help those who are already in MPP and have been waiting in danger in Mexico for a long time? Will it use parole for those with pending cases? What of those ordered removed and deported in abstentia?

2) Will the administration lift or change the CDC order so that asylum seekers can seek protection at the border?

3) If yes, will it rely on metering? Will it rely on swift screening that does not provide adequate due process? Will it shift away from detention?

4) There are many asylum seekers stranded in Mexico who were metered or expelled. Will there be any redress for them? Many of these folks are from Central America but many also from elsewhere--especially from Africa and Haiti (not subject to MPP).

5) How will the U.S. work with UNHCR, Mexico, local U.S. officials, and NGOs on both sides of the border to really make needed changes so that we turn the page on reception?

Am prompted to do this 🧵 following @BEERG sharing of Gove 19 April’16 speech, @kevinhorourke observation on interests & ideas & @CER_Grant observation that historians will ponder the weakness of economic interests in Brexit negs at @InstituteGC yesterday @BrigidLaffan

1. Seems to me that @BorisJohnson has delivered on the @michaelgove 2016 speech in one important sense-not the sunny uplands of Brexit but the working out of what Brexit was to this clique who drove the Leave campaign @BrigidLaffan

2. That was a total rejection of the #EU model of internationalisation, its governance regimes, institutions, regulatory frameworks, its ideals & the political, economic & legal order it represents. @BrigidLaffan

3. This was evident in tone of Brexit negs, for example @DavidGHFrost dismissal of EU as ‘your organisation’ @MichelBarnier & refusal to recognise nature of EU re. Diplomatic states. Treating it an as IO despite the fact that there were U.K. MEPs in @Europarl_EN @BrigidLaffan

4. Evident also in refusal of a chapter on foreign & security policy & the preference for bilateral relations particularly the key capitals post Brexit. @BrigidLaffan

ChYna literally told us.

THE 45 COMMUNIST GOALS AS READ INTO THE CONGRESSIONAL RECORD, 1963

1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.

Prediction: the Ontario govt led by Premier Ford and Dr. Williams has been consistent: they want businesses open as much as possible. They will be getting an earful from their backers. We should therefore expect an unscientific, irrational decision to open up much too early.

To do this, they will push hard to reopen schools since the workforce needed for these businesses can't work without school and day care for kids. They will lean on arguments like child mental health, business suffering, and improved safety inspections. They will gaslight experts

They may even resort to more open letters from mayors, business associations, and business petitions. They might even resort to pointing out how well Ontario is doing vs even worse countries or states. They will leave PHU's to make local decisions without support.

They may even resort to directing rapid test inventory to manufacturing sector workplaces, even though those sectors (eg auto parts) have little to do with "essential". They may even direct vaccines to "essential workers" over the 60+ at home vulnerable.

They may even horde federal dollars to focus them on businesses vs programs like paid sickness benefits or expanded testing. Past behaviour points to future behaviour.

It’s done. I’m a Sputnik now! I’ve just got my first shot of the Russin vaccine at a mobile vaccination station in Central Moscow. In there weeks I will get the second one. Now feeling a bit lightheaded, but that may be a psychological reaction. How was it and why I did it? /2

The station is located on the second floor of a big food court in a former trolleybus depot on Lesnaya Street near the Belorussian Railway Station. The for court itself was packed with people. Almost none wearing a mask. A paradise for each virus. The vaccination was very.../3

…well organised. Very nice and polite people, explaining everything. Smooth workflow. All in all I needed about an hour. Coming without any advanced reservation, I had to fill out some forms, see a doctor and get the shot. My foreign passport didn’t raise any questions./4

The vaccination was for free. This is one of six such mobile station in Central Moscow, which began to work at the beginning of this week. Why did I take the Russian vaccine? First: I have no other choice, if I don’t want to go to Germany and wait there for probably a long…/5

…time, may be until summer. Second: I saw some friends and colleagues getting vaccinated and all went without any complications. Third: Some of my friend here are doctors. They all got the vaccine, assuring me that it is at least save. Whether it will help as much as the…/6

This is a very uninformed article that presumes the dumb way Trump initiated executive orders taints all executive action a president has the authority and mandate to

I can't believe this has to be spelled out:
Congress passes laws, presidents implement them. There are latent authorities in already passed laws that can be employed to give material benefits to people. That's literally the job description of the president in Article II.

Most of Trump's exec orders were BS but some did draw on already passed laws, like the farm funding through the Commodity Credit Corporation. That was billions of dollars that cannot be "rolled back."

It was untargeted and drawn upon disproportionately by rich farmers. But there are more equitable measures, with the authority granted by CONGRESS, which the president can implement.

So far Biden has not really taken this opportunity. There's been a blizzard of paper, most of it rolling back Trump EOs, and some emergency programs. A few of those emergency programs are going to give real benefits (eligibility changes on nutrition assistance for ex.)

1/ I've watched (part of) Navalny's "Putin's Palace" exposé, and I suggest you do same. (It is subtitled.) It's half psychological profile/biography and half @60Minutes style follow the money report, citing rafts of documents, using drone footage. Now...

2/ I cannot verify its claims. You'd need to be a Russian speaker commanding a team of forensic accountants, for starters. But the pattern of Putin using "wallets"—old friends and cronies to horcrux his vast stolen wealth—is well known. He may be richest person in world.

3/ "Putin's Palace" hones in on one...palace...estimated to cost $1.3 BILLION. But it's the pattern of how the money is hidden that's more nefarious, esp put against what Russia spends on its people in pensions and otherwise. Here's a @CNN summary

4/ Also how Putin morphed from a Soviet intelligence agent to evoking more of a Russian Orthodox tinged version of Mother Russia. It's all about the money—he seems quite mad about exhibiting wealth—and the film's somewhat treacly comparisons to the Sun King, are apt.

5/ Navalny had a big base of support before this film, but his decision to come back, simultaneously release "Putin's Palace," which has outraged Russians, especially young ones—this is what people are protesting for, and likely dying for, today.

I spoke to 5 global enterprises about remote work last week

Here’s what they told me about their plans for the future

[ a thread ] 💻🏠🌎

💰 Office space: All of them have $Billion real estate portfolios

All of them plan to cut it by atleast 50% and as much as 70%

📍 Talent Access: The thing they are most interested in is access to talent

Rather than hiring the best person in a 30-mile radius of the office, they’ll hire the best person on the planet

📈 Efficiency: Their concern about remote work post-pandemic was that productivity would slip

It’s increased. They now know remote work works

🤔 Remote Dilemma: A big concern is losing their best people through not giving their teams what they want

Each company plans to let people work from home 60-100% of the time

Everybody ready for more #WealthOfNations? Let's go!

The third sort of rude produce is the kind where human attempts to cultivate and improve it produce unpredictable results. Examples include wool and animal hides. (I.xi.m.1) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

It seems like the price of these should rise right along with the price of meat, but Smith says “Not so fast!” (I.xi.m.3)
#WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

Because this sort of produce travels much better than meat, the market is much much larger. And we all know that more competition drives prices down. (I.xi.m.4–5) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

And it all gets more complicated when government gets involved, like it did in the English wool industry. (Isn’t that always the way? You should see the forms we have to fill out to get each tweet govt. approved!) (I.xi.m.8) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

The calamoid palms 🌴 have over 500 species spread across the world, but their higher-level relationships were a bit of a mystery. Until now.

Out today in #MolecularPhylogeneticsAndEvolution:

A robust phylogenomic framework for the calamoid palms https://t.co/JiCbSUlheH

1/10

First some background info, so that you know what we are talking about:

Calamoid palms look a bit like snakes 🐍 (don't they!?!), because their fruits are covered in overlapping scales. And with their often fierce spines, they are equally fearsome. 😱

2/10

They are classified into 17 genera, 10 subtribes and 3 tribes. They have an amazing variety of growth forms, from stemless to climbing to tree habit. 🌱🌴

3/10

But as I said, their relationships have been a bit of a mystery. Here's the varying relationships previous studies found over the last 20 years.

4/10

We tackled this mystery with a phylogenomic approach: we sampled almost a thousand genes (a hundred times more than previous studies!) of 75 species representing all calamoid tribes, subtribes and genera.

The resulting data matrix is pretty massive...

5/10

I'm feeling kind of bored and at loose ends, so I'm going to start serializing, in tweets, my 2006 ~10,000 word "Training Manual for the New American Left"

Here goes:

1. The following might be considered as a treatise on a strategy or for progressives in coming years. It is not at all necessary for those reading the following to agree with every point made in the document as long as there is acceptance of several underlying premises:

2. The new conservative right has achieved at least partial control of many of the significant institutions in American society, especially in politics, media, and to a lesser extent in business and - increasingly - in the area of religion.

3. Meanwhile, political progressives have failed to effectively defend enlightenment values and mainstream institutions from a sustained attack that has been ongoing now for several decades, and...

4. progressives have almost wholly missed the parallel construction, by the new American right - largely now the Christian and religious right - of an entire parallel nation, a shadow nation with its own alternate institutions, culture, assumptions, and even versions of history..

This is supremely clever propaganda. A former PLA senior colonel, Zhou Bo, writes for the once balanced SCMP (what a fall!) about the "inevitable decline of the US" and wonders if it will be peaceful.

"inevitabile decline",
a) the "inevitability" itself is removed from the central focus, that from any challenge or question.
and
b) the old question of whether China's rise (again considered inevitable) will be itself be peaceful is completely ignored.
Interestingly, however,

he also states that "China’s rise so far has been peaceful" - only "so far", mind.
Let's ignore for a moment China's actions against the Filipinos in the South China Sea, its provoking the Japanese SDF in the East China Sea or its initiating a major confrontation along the

disputed boundary with India in 2020. Zhou is signalling that if the US isn't going to be peaceful, don't expect China to be either.
"the Pentagon’s unabated military interventions after the Cold War have reduced the US’ national strength – a point few seem to disagree with now"

No definition provided for "national strength". Just a bald assertion. Accept it, swallow it - as Zhou rushes quickly to the next point
"when a democracy is in decline, it may become vitriolic and violent" - forget that authoritarian states are at all times vitriolic and violent

The dust hasn't yet settled, but we can draw some early conclusions from today's protests in #Russia. TL;DR: The Kremlin and the opposition are at a stalemate.

/1

I don't see reliable nationwide turnout figures, but this feels similar in size & scale to the 2017 Dimon protests, which brought out 60-100k nationwide. This may be bigger. Either way, more than the Kremlin was hoping to see, but probably less than the opposition wanted.

/2

The Kremlin went to extraordinary lengths to keep people off the streets - including preventive arrests, online censorship, and threats to workers and students - and there's little indication it worked (though, I suppose, turnout could have been even higher).

/3

The opposition demonstrated that it can turn out significant numbers of people nationwide, even when its leaders are in jail and there is a credible threat of violence.

/4

Meanwhile, the Kremlin is sticking to the tactics it used against the Moscow protests in the summer of 2019: random but not overwhelming violence, enough to create fears of bodily harm, but not enough to keep people off the streets.

/5

50 Things Every Dominant Should Have Their Lover Do For Them! 😈

A check list 📝

1. A slow strip dance 💃

2. Crawl to you 🐈

3. Kneel for you 🧎‍♀️

4. Swallow everything 🤤

5. Present her vulnerable areas for you like a gift ☺

6. Swear for you (not at you) 😉

7. Accept your punishments with a smile 😏

8. Be bruised by you 😈

9. Be made to feel small around you 😇

10. Have her open to sharing you 🤴👸👩

11. Wear more lingerie for you 👙

12. Taste you more often and in crazier ways 🍆

13. Obey ALL of your commands 🙏

14. Have her talk up to you 😇

15. Have her look up to you 😃

16. Ask you for permission to do things, in bed and out 😊

17. Beg you for your attention 🥰

18. Lick more of you 😛

19. Be super enthusiastic for you 🤯

20. Talk super dirty when you allow her to 🤬

21. Gag on you 😵

22. Accept you spitting on her (when it would add to the craziness) 😅

23. Accept you pulling her hair more 🤪

24. Leaving scratch marks down your back 🐯

25. Drool more over you 🤤

26. Want to be choked by you more often 😈

27. Bend over for you eagerly

28. Play with your 🍒 without being asked

29. Clean up after you 🧹

30. Ask you for oil massages 😍

31. Wear high heels to tease you 👠

32. Lean on your shoulder during good times and bad 🤗

33. Shake because you're so good at what you do 😲

You. Yes you. You are the target of a massive disinformation campaign.
Corrupt, evil powers of the world do bad and nasty things. And their tactic is to then flood the world with tons of fake news. They don't have a good way to spin it, so they drown the truth. /thread

These evil powers will try to delegitimize journalists who report the truth. Journalists will be attacked, arrested, sometimes killed.
Journalists and investigators are on the front lines of this information war. And they're our only hope for finding the truth.

Inoculate yourself from this by recognizing where disinformation comes from and don't trust those sources.
And try not to be so outraged, fear driven, or believe everything you read or see. This knocks you off balance and distracts you.

Stay focused. Stay centered. It's not going to get better from here. Evil powers recognize how powerful this is and are using it more than ever. It's going to be harder to spot the truth. But don't give up. Don't let them win.

Even the good guys. Even your side does stuff like this. They do bad stuff, and then try to erase that, distancing themselves from it and not owning it. It's also important to hold your own side accountable for the bad things they do.