Reactionaries are like, "ah, I see that you post constantly and passionately about minimum wage, but riddle me this: have you considered that some people I don't respect or care about might benefit from this?"

I love it when a thought occurs to someone a century after everyone with a brain thought about it and quickly explained why it's irrelevant or false.

Ah, but did you know that human beings who are of high school age also are compelled by social structure to mortgage the time they have in this life to perform labor to survive, from which wealthy people extract profit??? #gotcha

I find it very clarifying to think about min. wage not as the lowest amount you're owed for your labor but the lowest amount you're owed just for giving your employer that time, even if you're standing around. Your time alive is also what they are buying from you.

This is useful in part because it negates skill-based labor objections, which are garbage anyway, but anything that reframes the conversation as a human right and not a job-based right is good.

1/ Why Silicon Valley Doesn't Get Bitcoin

Over the last 12 years of it’s existence, Bitcoin has been misunderstood by Silicon Valley which has led to many cringe worthy moments as they’ve endorsed silly ideas and even worse, scams.

1/9 - “In the second wave we acquired much more evidence that schoolchildren are almost equally, if not more infected by SARS-CoV-2 than others.”

2/9 - “The problem is not that schools are unsafe for children,” Mr. Boris Johnson said last week. “The problem is schools may nonetheless act as vectors for transmission, causing the virus to spread between households.”

3/9 - “An antibody survey conducted by researchers in Geneva in May and December, using thousands of random samples, found that children of age 6 to 18 were getting infected as often as young adults. The study has yet to be peer reviewed.”

4/9 - “One reason for this: The Swiss city’s schools have been open since the summer, while restrictions have been placed on adults, meaning schoolchildren played a bigger role in transmitting the virus during the autumn surge.”

5/9 - “In Austria, a nationwide survey by universities and medical institutes found that children under 10 showed a similar rate of infection to those between 11 and 14, and that the children in general were getting infected as often as teachers.”

#Ramayana #LecturesOnTheRamayana

In the past, we had a glimpse of Lakshmana's devotion towards Sri Rama, his brother and father figure.

However, it is interesting to note his unique relationship with Sita, especially as seen by from her perspective.

Thread below

1/

We all know about the Golden Deer / Maricha incident and the way Sita influences Lakshmana to go in search of his brother.

Personally, I am unable to get 2 strong emotional points in one thread and hence, I will skip this incident for today.

2/

In Sundara Kanda, when Hanuman meets Sita, she says the following

सिंहस्कन्धो महाबाहुर्मनस्वी प्रियदर्शिनः।
पितृवद्वर्तते रामे मातृवन्मां समाचरन्।।

Lakshmana, who has lionshoulders and strong arms, who is handsome, who takes Rama as his father & treats me as his own mother

3/

ह्रियमाणां तदा वीरो न तु मां वेद लक्ष्मणः।
वृद्धोपसेवी लक्ष्मीवान् शक्तो न बहुभाषिता।।

Heroic Lakshmana, did not know while I was borne away. He is prosperous, foremost in serving elders. He is energetic and reserved in his speech like my father-in-law ..

4/

He is a prince dear (to his brother).

These are from Sarga-38, shlokas 60 and 61.

There are 3 distinct points which I want to draw the attention of the reader to.

1. She also compares Lakshmana to Dasaratha much like how Rama did when he constructed the hut in panchavati

5/

Over the last few months through pcrclaims, a core group of lawyers, scientists and other experts have been campaigning hard for an end to PCR data inaccuracies. #PCR #PCRGATE #PCRTest

As a team, we have received nearly 1,000 stories of hardship, disappointment and tragedy. And been moved by the many people out there who are really under pressure as a result of Government policies enacted through PCR data.

So what are we doing?

Through our pro bono network or law firms and individual lawyers, we have been collating witness statements relating to personal harms, harms to children and harms to businesses for ongoing judicial reviews.

We have collectively put thousands of hours into researching, making FOI requests, talking and writing to potential claimants, writing legal letters, researching claim options and interviewing claimants and expert witnesses.

Our team behind the scenes receives and reviews filings and judgments from courts around the world - all offer us all some hope for future cases here in England. So why the delay?

Last night, I was reading part of a thread where @liminal_warmth was putting together a new clan // guild // whatever on classic WoW. I almost jumped on it, but then I remembered my previous WoW experience.

I started playing during Lich King, because the people I knew started playing then. They played on a heavy RP server. I spun up an undead rogue named Qaddafi. And off I went into the world.

At this time, I played through all the story stuff. The world was amazing, and I applaud the writers for building it. However, since everyone else was already an 80, I didn't get to do dungeons. They only had the rando dungeons once you hit a high enough level.

As such, I was always woefully undergeared. By the time I hit 80, My primary weapon was a decent off hand weapon, and there weren't opportunities to upgrade. As I was gear light, my DPS was below average, and I'd get kicked. A lot.

The culture dictated you needed to be a spreadsheet king, or have been part of a raiding guild since the beginning. I was low on DPS, so I got kicked before completing the dungeon, and the rogue gear was always at the end.

no gear > kicked > missed gear > cycle repeats

Background
The following transcripts were released on January 15, 2021, by the Senate Judiciary Committee. They were not released entirely searchable, so The Black Vault has processed them all to have a searchable format.

The Judiciary Committee also released a press release regarding them, which reads as the following:

The Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), today released transcripts of interviews conducted during its inquiry into the origins and aftermath of the Crossfire Hurricane Investigation.

“I consider the Crossfire Hurricane investigation a massive system failure by senior leadership, but not representative of the dedicated, hardworking patriots who protect our nation every day at Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice.

“As chairman of the Senate JudiciaryCommittee, I have decided to release all transcripts of depositions involving the committee’s oversight of the CrossfireHurricane investigation. We have released as much material as possible,but some classified material has still been withheld.

1/ Republicans and Reactionaries, a thread.

There will be post-mortems ad infinitum on how Trumpism rose and fell, but those narratives will always be incompete or deliberately evasive if they don't reckon w/the fact that the GOP itself made Trump possible.

2/ It's undeniably true that we have always had fringe, extremist movements in the USA, whether Know-Nothings or Birchers. What kept them on the fringe was their comparative *political* irrelevance.

3/ Since the Goldwater campaign in 1964, however, the Republican Party began adopting elements of extremist/fringe ideations, slowly at first and then with gusto.

4/ It started with Goldwater's paeans to "State's Rights," which have always been a stalking horse for institutionalized racism. After Buckley's pro forma denunciation of the JBS, it then accelerated with incorporation of anti-UN ("anti-globalist") notions.

5/ Well-documented in the literature, the craven Southern Strategy of the late '60s through mid '70s -- another overt/covert appeal to racism (cf, the notorious Lee Atwater "n****r n****r" interview) -- continued the GOP's embracing of the hard(er) Right...

I am a wife.

You know why?

Because I’m a married woman.

So the controversy over the “gendered” language in the new House Rules is as follows.

1. The House Rules contain an anti-nepotism (you can’t hire your own relatives) provision.

2. To make that make sense, there’s a definition of who is included in the meaning of a relative.

/1

3. That definition is found in Rule XXIII, clause 8(c)(3). This👇🏻is what the definition said in the Rules for the last Congress (the 116th). It uses words like mother, father, wife, husband, daughter, son, etc. Words that convey gender. /2

4. The proposal for the new Congress (the 117th) was to change that definition to “non-gendered” language. Each new Congress adopts its own Rules at the beginning of its session, shortly after being sworn in. The *changes* to the old Rules are proposed in a House Resolution. /3

5. This year that was House Resolution 8. It proposed to change that definition of “relative” in section XXIII.8(c)(3) - & only in that section - to “non-gendered” language. 👇🏻

/4

Due to what's happened throughout 2020 and how it is starting in 2021, and considering the general lack of accurate info I've seen on the subject, I think it is time for a National Guard Thread. Buckle up. Here we go.
[Today's Thread]

30 things you can do that might help #autistic people in your lives.

A thread. Please read and share widely, and add to it as you see fit.

#autism #autistic

1. Let us decompress in quiet areas when we need to. Our desire to be alone is not judgement on you, it's simple self preservation. #autism

2. If you need us to do something, give us very clear, unambiguous instruction. Don't feel like you're being rude doing this, but don't sound irritated or patronising! #autism

3. Do not expect us to react to things in a way you would expect. That way lies disappointment. We often show our emotions in very different ways to what you might expect. #autism

4. Don't assume we aren't capable of thought and feeling if we're non-verbal. Don't assume we're incapable of communicating in other ways either. #autism

Peter Lynch is a great investment manager of all time. He is famous for introduction of PEG. (P/E growth)

According to Mr. Lynch the faster the company grows, the higher the P/E ratio you should pay for that company

Here is a Thread - Peter Lynch thoughts & my interpretations.

1. Investing is fun, exciting & dangerous if you don’t do any work

Fun becoz we tend to learn so many things

Exciting becoz it give great moments of celebration because of unimaginable wealth

Dangerous becoz it can be addictive due to greed & people may start finding shortcuts

2. You can outperform the experts if you use your edge by investing in companies or industries you already understand.

Study businesses, apply common sense and invest into something which you understand.

No need to adventure & no need to be part of anything or everything.

3. The stock market has come to be dominated by a herd of professional investors. You can beat the market by ignoring the herd.

Stay away from noise & crowd to come out as a winner.

4. Behind every stock is a company. Find out what it’s doing

The underlying entity of a stock is business. Choose to ignore everything else, but never ignore to study business.

Company includes few more things in addition to business like management, etc.

Interestingly, if you replace #SovietUnion with #USA and #Communism with #Capitalism, you have a very exact display of our current, turbocharged #LateCapitalism that is willing to sacrifice peoples' lives across the globe for

So no matter if your facism pays in Mark, Ruble or Dollar: At the end of the day, it's #ModiOperandi are similar if not identical.

It's just Germany that industrialized human slaughter for profit during WW2.

Similarly, people lie to themselves that they either enjoy #capitalism or are "better off with this system than X" when it's not

I mean, almost everyone [with very, very few exceptions based of partially and mostly privilegue] is forced to work some sort of job to be able to pay the bills with no actual alternative

...regardless of the fact that people would most likely be far more productive, creative and useful if they're given the economic freedom to spend their time with something that doesn't essentially pay well, but is serving others if not the entire society.

OK then.

So the new CDU Party Leader #CDUvorsitz is known - it's Armin Laschet.

This 🧵 will explain why he won, explain what he means, and outline what happens next.

1/20

At the CDU's party congress today, the three candidates - Laschet, Friedrich Merz & Norbert Röttgen - gave 15 min speeches

That was the first signal of what was to come... Today we saw the very best of Laschet - playing the reliable, careful person, not heavy on detail

2/20

Merz by contrast gave an ill focused speech, and did not make a single reference to Merkel or AKK, the outgoing party leader. He seems to have learned nothing

Röttgen, long the outsider, gave a speech with a lot more detail - especially on green issues and the future

3/20

1001 Delegates - these were the results

Round 1 🗳
Merz 385
Laschet 380
Röttgen 224

Round 2 🗳
Laschet 521
Merz 466

About 1/3 of Röttgen's vote went to Merz, 2/3 to Laschet

4/20

It's important to emphasise how absolutely *average* Laschet is in the CDU. If you were to imagine your archetypal CDU politician it would be him. Not to edgy, not too sharp, not too radical, not too conservative, not too dashing... it would be him

5/20

In Europe, schools are closing as studies show schoolchildren can play a significant role in spreading infections

1/



As U.S. authorities debate whether to keep schools open, a consensus is emerging in Europe that children are a considerable factor in the spread of Covid-19—and more countries are shutting schools for the first time since the spring.

2/

Closures have been announced recently in the U.K., Germany, Ireland, Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands on concerns about a more infectious variant of the virus first detected in the U.K. and rising case counts despite lockdowns.

3/

While the debate continues, recent studies and outbreaks show that schoolchildren, even younger ones, can play a significant role in spreading infections.

4/

"The recent shutdown of schools was especially dramatic in England. U.K. PM Boris Johnson initially planned to keep elementary schools there open after the Christmas break, but changed course amid soaring infections. After one day, schools were closed until further notice

5/

What's the difference between these 3 images? Why is one the ubiquitous example of great style, another the joke everyone wants to avoid becoming, and the last what your typical guy looks like?

I'll explain.

Great style consists of two things - positive aesthetics and cultural relevance.

Positive aesthetics simply means it has to look good - it should follow the rules of proportion and symmetry, the colors should be flattering, etc.

Positive aesthetics are why we love period pieces and classic old style.

The clothing visuals we love are those that are pleasing to the eye and give us a sense of satisfaction while looking at them.

But positive aesthetics aren't enough.

You can't throw on a toga, or a kilt, or a 19th-century 3-piece suit and walk around in it today because, as beautiful as the aesthetics are, there's no cultural relevance.

This is the biggest mistake the gentledorks make - all aesthetics, no relevance and it's actually why most of the guys you see doing period dress are culturally insignificant guys with no social status or standing.

Last night I watched a video where boog bois in gun-themed Aloha shirts show off their weapon stash in a late night tv "Top X" list format -- so that you don't have to.

Observations…

#USradicals

1) If shit gets weird & they ditch the loud shirts, they'll be somewhat identifiable by their distinct choice in guns & gear. They like FNs, short AR-style carbines & pistols, & glocks. Everything uses the most common ammo types & clips.

#nsag #vnsa

2) Why those guns? Because these guys are like analytical engineer-type gamers with a serious survivalist bent in their thinking. Everything is optimized for weight & interchangeability with their own & hypothetical enemy weapons.
#inaugurationthreats

3) Basically, they're NERDS applying zombie apocalypse logic to a hypothetical civil war. They even use the word "combos" (gamer slang) when talking about which guns to include in your kit.
#domesticarmedactors #gamer

4) Other crossovers with gamer culture abound. Goofy cartoon unicorn patches, thick glasses, and pop culture tats. They're potentially violent non-state actors, but they also clearly watch Adventure Time or something.
#geek