Will be a v ugly week, but impt to remember, short of the House flipping red by Friday, there's no remaining power mechanism in the U.S. capable of preventing Biden taking the presidency on Jan 20.

Everything else is just show. A shitshow, to be sure, but a show nonetheless.

Let's walk through the various shitshows that might happen, to various levels of insanity, and why they all still end up with Biden as POTUS on Jan 20.

First it's now certain you'll get objections at the EC with senators + reps. But it needs a majority in both H & S to sustain the objection, and the House is blue, so no dice.

Can they fillibuster the EC to force it to never decide? No, but for complicated reasons.

ECA gives a max two hours of debate per objection, and that caps out at 5 days (ugh).

A suitably devious R senator might go for broke and try to use a Senate rule to bypass that cap, passed by majority vote in the Senate, with the sole purpose of filibustering the EC itself. Which won't happen, and isn't close.

But it did? Guess what, Biden is *still* president.

Good news everyone, Jay Hoag gave us the simple 5 point playbook for finding Magical Companies in consumer technology.

1. product offers combo of value, convenience, selection
2. there's tremendous engagement
3. a virtuous cycle
4. tremendous execution
5. kinda crazy leader

Obviously Jay Hoag on ILTB is as self recommending as it gets

One of my areas of focus in 2020 was to scale the size of our content business across platforms.

Here is our year in review 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽

1/ Everything starts and ends with Twitter for me.

Jan 2020: ~ 300k followers
Dec 2020: ~ 430k followers

I do over 100 million impressions per month and will continue to use Twitter to drive traffic everywhere else over time.

2/ The daily letter that I send to investors allows me to have nuanced, more analytical conversations with people.

Jan 2020: 38,500 free subscribers
Dec 2020: 102,000 free subscribers

The open rate is around 35% and the click through rate is around 10% when I email everyone.

3/ The podcast is where I get to learn from the world's smartest investors and entrepreneurs.

Jan 2020: ~ 200k audio downloads
Dec 2020: ~ 1 million audio downloads

We have published 450+ episodes since inception and will do a few hundred more in 2021.

4/ This year was the first time I focused on YouTube, which is a highly underrated platform.

Jan 2020: Under 8k subscribers
Dec 2020: 135k subscribers

People watched 3.2 million hours of video content on the platform and we hit the goal of 10+ million video views for 2020.

Life & Business Advice from LegacyFuel

a Collection of Tweets that will change ur life

don't enter 2021 without it

1 RT = 1 obscure business insight

i'll start......

the dilemma that most young Entrepreneurs have

they want the Clout of a Personal Brand without the Track Record of Multiple Successful Businesses

that's how you fade into obscurity, because the quality of your content can only be as good as your Knowledge Base

every dude should strive to have $50K in the bank

that amount will allow you to bootstrap in most USA states & countries with $2k a month for up to 2 years

having that Runway will give you the Freedom to build businesses that U really want instead of ones out of Desperation

i spent a good chunk of my 20's "uninstalling" Toxic Ideas about Money, Wealth, Life

if ur a Rich Kid, u have a Sick Advantage from the Get-Go because u already have the Software installed

if ur a Broke Kid on $ Twitter, ur already in the Best Place to get ur Software Updated

noobs always ask

"what's a GoOd OnLiNe BuSiNeSs?"

as if theres some corner of the internet where everybody is making trillions and everywhere else is Dry

U can sell ANYTHING

the question is "what do you enjoy thinking about or doing?"

then u build a Business around THAT

Are you on this list and backing @SMcPartland and @Royston_Smith's amendment to the Fire Safety Bill? Please support our campaign so leaseholders do not have to pay for historic defects. You are ruining lives:
@RobertJenrick @mhclg @ChrisPincher

#EndOurCladdingScandal

@AaronBell4NUL
@AdamAfriyie
@AlanMakMP
@AlbertoCostaMP
@AlecShelbrooke
@alexburghart
@AlexChalkChelt
@Alex_Stafford
@aliciakearns
@AlokSharma_RDG
@AlunCairns
@amandamilling
@ASollowayUK
@andreajenkyns
@andrealeadsom
@AndrewBowie_MP
@ABridgen
@griffitha
@AJonesMP
@ALewerMBE

A short thread about being a self-published author while I wait for something to render. A lot of people hate Amazon, and they do have some business practices that they really should change, but for me, their book publishing service allowed me to be an author (1)

Without Amazon's services, we would still be stuck in the old publishing dichotomy of traditional publishing (where an author has an agent and a publisher) and vanity press (where an author pays a publisher to print their book). (2)

Does it mean I'll never get my book sold in @Waterstones? Sure. Does that bother me? Not really. Waterstones and other traditional book stores carried my first novel for two years when I was signed by a small publisher in Edinburgh. I got zero sales. (3)

It was the worst mistake of my life, as the publisher marked the book up significantly, pricing it out of the market. In hindsight, I should have never signed the agreement, and thankfully was released from it in 2019. (4)

I recently got in touch with @Bookshop_Org on the back of an article I read about them. In theory, it sounds great, and I wish them every success in allowing small indie bookstores a better chance against corporate giants (5)

SAGA MEGATHREAD

SPRING & ALPHA SPC CO LIMITED 19 Jun 2007 - 18 Sep 2007
SPRING & ALPHA TOPCO LIMITED 19 Jun 2007 - 18 Sep 2007
SPRING & ALPHA MIDCO LIMITED 13 Jun 2007 - 18 Sep 2007
SPRING & ALPHA BIDCO LIMITED 13 Jun 2007 - 18 Sep 2007
ST&H LIMITED

ST&H GROUP LIMITED
ST&H TRANSPORT LIMITED
ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY-EIGHTH SHELF TRADING COMPANYLIMITED 17 Mar 1983 - 15 Sep 1983
INTER-CHURCH TRAVEL LIMITED 05 Apr 1962 - 05 Feb 2009
INTER-CHURCH TRAVEL LIMITED
SIDECONTACT LIMITED 06 Oct 1987 - 25 Feb 1988

LINERFLAME LIMITED 18 May 2007 - 19 Jun 2007
LINERBROOK LIMITED 18 May 2007 - 13 Jun 2007
TITAN TRANSPORT LIMITED 25 Sep 2009 - 05 Aug 2019
SAGA HOLIDAYS LIMITED 01 May 1988 - 05 Feb 2009
SAGA FINANCIAL LIMITED 25 Feb 1988 - 01 May 1988

SAGA HEALTHCARE TRUST LIMITED
SAGA INVESTMENT DIRECT LIMITED 08 Aug 1995 - 20 Dec 2006
SAGA PERSONAL FINANCE LIMITED 20 Dec 2006 - 24 May 2011
SAGA PERSONAL FINANCE LIMITED 24 May 2011 - 02 Feb 2018
SAGA SHIPPING COMPANY LIMITED
SAGA CRUISES LIMITED 24 October 1996

"Small deals rely on promises and contracts. Big deals rely on alignment and trust."

@naval

1/ Today we announce immi, a food brand we've been working on for 18 months. @kchanthasiri and I spent the past decade in tech and started over by learning the food industry from scratch. Here's why we're doing this, the $42bn food category we're tackling, and where we're going👇

2/ We met close to a decade ago working as product managers at a company called Kabam. We didn't know each other, but during a work trip in Vancouver one morning, we somehow arrived at the same noodle joint. We became the two PMs in our org. who bonded over noodles for breakfast.

3/ After Kabam, we stayed close friends and roommates, but both of us went separate paths. KChan stayed as a PM at a health-tech startup called Amino, and later went on to be a lead PM at Facebook. I went the early-stage venture route, most recently as an investor at @pearvc.

4/ Over our friendship, we discovered that we share similar family backgrounds in the Asian food industry. My grandparents are farmers in Taiwan and grow a fruit called a rose apple. KChan's grandmother ran a noodle stand in Thailand and his dad ran a Thai restaurant in LA.

5/ Our families immigrated to the U.S. so we could avoid working in the food industry. (Ironically, we've now come back full circle).

As we've grown older, we've noticed an alarming fact: our families are getting sicker due to chronic health conditions from unhealthy diets.

In a new clinical trial with 145 subjects, subjects were given drinks sweetened with aspartame, glucose, fructose, or high-fructose corn syrup for two weeks.

Some results
HFCS group:
17% higher LDL-C
15% higher apoB
11% higher

Subjects were given beverages to drink three times per day, containing:

Aspartame, control
Glucose, 25% daily energy requirements
Fructose, 17.5%
Fructose, 25%
High-fructose corn syrup, 17.5%
HFCS, 25%
Sucrose, 25%

Patients were told to refrain from drinking any other sugar-sweetened beverages.

Riboflavin was added to the drinks as a biomarker for adherence and tested in the urine.

Urinary riboflavin was low at the beginning, rose throughout the study, and did not rise differently between participants in each group over the course of the study, indicating that the biomarker worked and adherence was similar between groups.

The trial was double-blinded and on an outpatient basis.

Subjects were not randomized but groups were matched for sex, BMI, and concentrations of fasting triglyceride (TG), cholesterol, HDL-C, and insulin at baseline.

I'm in the later stages of purchasing a niche sub-contractor in the SE US. I'm now working with the sellers on the nitty gritty handover items that need to be transitioned. Here is a summary of my working list:

Insurance: (Staying with current provider)
- auto coverage on fleet of 40+ vehicles.
- General liability policy.
- Workers Comp policy.
- Bonding, done on a job by job basis, for a minority of their work. (I got a backup quote from another bonding agent for a fall back).

Benefits:
- I'm doing an asset purchase, so retirement benefits will likely have to start fresh under new entity. Will keep the same provider.
- Health Insurance will remain with incumbent, but have to migrate and re-enroll everyone under new LLC.
- Exhaustive list of emp perks.

Payroll:
- Currently done in-house, and paid weekly. Will keep the same, but need to get everything lined up based on timing of close and bank account. (See below).

Bank Accounts:
- Goal is to keep the same bank account for now, to reduce number of changes- less to go wrong. Built in a true-up with sellers for any payments post-close that shouldn't have carried over. MAKE SURE to change authorized signers.

How spotify manipulates both its user as well as artists for more profit (a thread):

Spotify displays the monthly listeners of every single artist in their profile and ranks them based in it, for example justin bieber is at #2 right now with 76M monthly listeners

Lets be honest unless ur a part of stan twitter, u will think that justin bieber is the most popular artist right now, but that is where they trick you. Justin bieber is not even in top 10 most streamed artists of this year and not in top 5 most streamed artists of this month

So wats happening here? How he has 76M listeners then? Most of these listeners are passively listening to him from playlists, which means they play a playlist in general and one of those songs turn out to be a justin beiber song...

...so now though this person didnt intentionally listen to Justin bieber, he/ she is counted as a monthly listener for justin. So these monthly listeners are just a reflection of most playlisted artists right now not the most popular ones.

Delighted to be asked by @uklandestates to delve into their archive for their 30th anniversary. They now have a portfolio of 28 estates across the region, but the Team Valley was not just their first, it’s actually the oldest industrial estate in Europe

Team Valley was born because the North East didn’t rebound from worldwide recession like the South did. Although firms like Armstrongs dabbled with car-manufacture in the early 20s, the NE stuck all its eggs in the heavy industry basket: coal, ships and guns.

But demand for coal and armaments had cratered. In 1936, men even marched from Jarrow to London to highlight their desperation at mass unemployment. In Jarrow, it reached 80 per cent. In nearby Gateshead it was 57 per cent.

Such was the state of the region’s economy that in 1934 the National Government decided to site Europe’s first industrial estate in the Team Valley to create “facilities required by industrialists engaged in starting fresh enterprises” (of the type that were booming in the South)

The excellent @Englands_NE tells us that the River Team begins as a collection of streams near Tanfield in NW Durham – a name which originally meant ‘Team Field’. Team is an ancient name, meaning ‘dark river’ with the same root as the name of the Thames.

1/n Reliance Industries Ltd announces results for Q3 & 9m FY2020-21. Details follow… #RILresults

2/n Q3 FY2020-21 Reliance reports strong sequential rebound across all the businesses #RILresults

3/n Reliance posts highest ever consolidated quarterly Net Profit; Q3 FY2020-21 PAT at Rs 15,015 crore, up 24.9% (Excluding EO) #RILresults

4/n Q3 FY2020-21 Consolidated quarterly EBITDA up 12.0% Q-o-Q to a record Rs 26,094 crore #RILresults

5/n Q3 FY2020-21 Strong 38.2% sequential jump in quarterly EPS to Rs 20.5 per share (Excluding EO) #RILresults

We need to do now what we should have done last Spring: shut it all down, provide funds to support people & businesses thru closure and—here’s the key—USE THE TIME TO IMPLEMENT GOOD RESPONSE. That means: better testing & vaccine logistics, ventilation in schools & workplaces...

...improved production & distribution of N95 masks for everyone, improve internet access to allow wfh & school from home for those who *can* continue with that, safe opening plans for every type of workplace, universal paid quarantine & sick leave, open up parks & beaches...

...public health educational campaigns that teach everyone the basics of how viruses work (and while we’re at it, lets add some bacterial info to combat overuse of antibiotics), extended eviction moratoriums, actual oversight & accountability for workplace safety...

...basic income + increased minimum wage, authorization for expanded roles for nurse practitioners, expanded authorization for vaccination delivery by dentists, authorize telemedicine across state borders so students & others can continue to access care while not on campus...

...national COVID information hotline to help combat misinformation, permanently expanded public health workforce at federal & state & local levels, a coordinated set of COVID research priorities to answer important unknowns and a rolling rapid COVID funding application system...

"Making money is bad, unless I do it and then it's fine" -The beating heart of left-wing populism

The real lesson that should be learned early on in life:

No one actually cares about "big money", "big tech", "corporations", or "Wall Street".

They want YOU to be dumb enough to, so they can take YOUR money.

Populism is holding a treat in front of a dog as you give it a shot while it's enamored.

Look at the "populists"

Ted Cruz: Harvard Law grad
Briahna Joy Gray: Harvard Law grad
Chapo Trap House: makes >$120,000 a year
Josh Hawley: owns two homes in different states, Yale grad
Bernie Sanders: owns 3 homes
Tucker Carlson: trust fund TV dinner fortune heir

Walker Bragman: lives in a mansion in The Hamptons, parents are rich
Meagan Day: heiress to multimillion dollar fortune, lives in a mansion, parents are rich
Donald Trump: archetypal rich obnoxious New Yorker

Since I have received many questions and crazy accusations, on this last day of 2020 let me give you a random collection of thoughts to close out this year. 1/n

1. I miss Asia. It's awesome. Most countries have a sense that things are getting better and that opportunities exist. From people starting businesses to sending their kids to better schools, there is a vibrancy and optimism that is infectious 2/n

2. Americans are a whiny narcistic self absorbed lot that rather then get down to a task and make things happen are content to complain ad nauseum. The world don't owe you $#!+. Get down to it and get on with it 3/n

3. I was wrong about some key things about corona but also right about some key things. Compared to public health experts I'm probably about even. 4/n

4. I don't really identify with either party. I am pro-immigration and anti-death penalty. I am a foreign policy hawk. I am pro-market but believe anti-trust regulation needs more focus. Socially liberal but think wokeness is idiotic. My issue views do not align with either 5/n