BC CLIMATE CHANGE
Saved by @Mollyycolllinss

Many wonder how epidemiology could have become so politicized. But epidemiology - like climate science (the other "mysteriously politicized" subject) has intrinsic politics: to take epidemiology seriously, you have to acknowledge that our species has a shared destiny.

1/

 Much of the debate over "liberty" can be summed up as "you do you" - I'll swing my arm over here, you keep your nose over there, and so long as we both respect each others' "freedom," I won't punch you in the nose and your nose will remain unpunched.

2/
This breaks down when applied to epidemiology: "You wear your mask, I'll leave mine at home, and we'll both exercise our freedoms" is like "You swim in the no-pissing end of the pool, I'll swim down here in the pissing end, and we'll both get our way."

3/
We're in the same epidemiological pool, and the science is clear: masking's benefit is primarily in protecting others from you - your presymptomatic, asymptomatic (or symptomatic) spread of particles. Your decision not to wear a mask puts me in danger.

4/
If your worldview ascribes political outcomes to individual choices (implying that poverty or misfortune are the result of a combination of laziness and inferiority), then anything that demands a systemic view challenges its very foundations.

5/
Empathy is hard work. From the trivial (considering how your actions affect your family) to the thoughtful (expanding that to your community) to the profound (thinking of the effects for 7 generation to come), empathy constrains your happiness in service to a wider worldview.

6/
No one wants to think of themselves as selfish. Even the most Ayn-Rand-addled private equity ghoul can be found at the playground shouting as his toddler, "TIMMY! YOU BE NICE AND SHARE!"

https://t.co/XYm89kNaIp

7/
The advantage of neoliberal ideology is that it allows you to act selfishly while thinking of yourself as unselfish. There are two ideological tools used to construct this otherwise contradictory edifice:

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I. Efficient markets hypothesis: the belief that markets "clear" (allocate efficently) when everyone acts according to their own self-interest. If this is true, then being kind to other people actually makes us all worse off, while selfishness makes things better all around.

9/
II. Moral hazard: the belief that acts of kindness create "learned helplessness" in others - that socializing health, housing, education, nutrition or other human rights actually makes people dependent and incapable of fending for themselves.

10/
It's akin to the idea that feeding wild animals undoes their independent, wild nature, causing it to become habituated to human company.

As it turns out, this is true of wild animals, and not true of humans, which presents a serious real-world ideological challenge.

11/
Because the haphazard domestication of wild animals turns out to be another one of those things where individual choices affect others around you. This is very wittily elucidated in @hh_matt's 2020 book, A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear.

https://t.co/FVncmVlVmJ

12/
Hongoltz-Hetling chronicles the rise and fall of a libertopian "freetown" takeover of the New Hampshire village of Grafton. From the start, Freetown is riven by the contradictions of individual actions with systemic consequences, most vividly in human-bear relations.

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Bears roam the world without regard for human property boundaries, but by nature, they tend to avoid contact with humans - a good thing, since bears are fast and strong and can easily kill people if they choose to.

14/
So when some Graftonites decide to semi-domesticate bears by feeding them, and others decide to cope with the problem by poaching them, the town - and neighboring towns - are beset by previously unheard-of deadly bear attacks.

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It's easy to say, "Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose," but what if your activities turn bears into stochastic terrorists that end up maiming me? What if your campfires burn down not just your back 40, but my homestead?

16/
What if your CO2 emissions trigger floods that wipe out my city? What if your exhalations don't just endanger you, but also me?

The freetowners lump all laws - bans on pot smoking, bans on bear feeding - into one bucket, and so does Hongoltz-Hetling.

17/
They're both wrong. Smoking pot is your business. Emitting CO2 (or viral particles, or untamed campfire combustion, or semi-domesticated 600lb bears) is everyone's business.

18/
The stuff that's "everyone's business" is systemic: that means that it doesn't have reliable cause-and-effect relations. Your bear-feeding and your neighbor's bear-mauling don't have a bright line connecting them. Same for your mask-refusal and your neighbor's covid death.

19/
This unfortunate distance between cause and effect opens up space for legitimate and manufactured doubt. It allows people to do selfish and dangerous things while telling themselves efficient market/moral hazard fairy tales so they can look themselves in the mirror.

20/
That's why covid's politicized. To accept covid is to accept that a class of existential, urgent challenges that are systemic, not individual. That there's a freedom (the freedom not to drown in your own mucus) that requires curbs on other kinds of freedom (to go unmasked).

21/
Covid science denies neoliberalism. It's yet another example of reality's pernicious left-wing bias. THAT'S why masking (and not masking) are political acts.

Not just small-p political. As Congress hid in undisclosed bunkers from trumpist mobs, GOP members refused to mask.

22/
It was an enclosed, poorly ventilated space. GOP Congressjerks jeered at Democratic colleagues who begged them to mask up.

Now, three Dem Members of Congress have covid: @Schneider4IL10 [IL], @PramilaJayapal [WA], and @RepBonnie [NJ].

https://t.co/LGnkeVeKrr

23/
A video from the siege shows GOP members mocking @LisaBRochester [DE] as she offers them masks.

https://t.co/LLwCnQoLzR

24/
Jayapal has called for the Sergeant at Arms to begin fining and removing Congressjerks who refuse to mask up.

https://t.co/ULGIaf1KYS

eof/
ETA if you'd like to read this thread as a surveillance-free, ad-free single webpage with a permalink here you go: https://t.co/rV4IyAuaIr

More from Cory Doctorow #BLM

Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
One of the most Monkey's Paw things about my life is my relationship to books. When I was a teenager, I read all the way through the school and public libraries, spent everything I had on books, and still couldn't get enough and dreamt of more.

1/


Today, as a reviewer, I have more books than I can possibly read, huge, teetering mountains of books that I'm desperate to read, far beyond my ability to ever get through them. Periodically, I declare "book bankruptcy," sweep away the backlog and start over.

2/

Even then, my eyes are bigger than my stomach: I keep back a few books that I can't bear to part with and promise myself I'll read them someday. Usually I don't, but I just did, and boy did I ever make the right call with @TheUniverse's BROAD

I have read a LOT of histories of computing, and I had a front row seat for a lot of the events depicted in this book - people I worked with, people I worked against - and yet I was surprised over and over again with details and perspectives I'd never encountered.

4/

For example, for some reason, my ninth grade computer science course included lengthy readings on ENIAC, Univac, the Mark I and the Mark II, but none of those mentioned that they were all programmed exclusively or primarily by women.

5/
CULTURE
Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
If you think "It's not censorship unless the government does it," I want to change your mind.

It's absolutely true that the First Amendment only prohibits government action to suppress speech based on its content, but the First Amendment is not the last word on censorship.

1/


Here are some kinds of private speech-suppression that I think most of us can agree are censorship: when the John Birch Society burned mountains of rock records and novels - or when Tipper Gore's PMRC pressured record stores to drop punk, metal and rap albums.

2/


Or the Comics Code Authority, which signed up all comics publishers and retailers to block comics if they contained anything unfit for small children, which stunted American comics for generations while their European counterparts created entire sophisticated genres.

3/


Or MPAA ratings, in which a secret group of censors (falsely described as frequently rotated, randomly selected parents - really they're long-serving studio insiders) decides whether movies get NC-17 ratings and thus be blocked from nearly every screen in the country.

4/


(You can learn more about this from Kirby Dick's unmissable doc, "This Film Is Not Yet Rated," which documents both how the MPAA misleads the public about ratings, and uses them to block LGBTQ
HISTORY
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Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
There are lots of problems with ad-tech:

* being spied on all the time means that the people of the 21st century are less able to be their authentic selves;

* any data that is collected and retained will eventually breach, creating untold harms;

1/


* data-collection enables for discriminatory business practices ("digital redlining");

* the huge, tangled hairball of adtech companies siphons lots (maybe even most) of the money that should go creators and media orgs; and

2/

* anti-adblock demands browsers and devices that thwart their owners' wishes, a capability that can be exploited for even more nefarious purposes;

That's all terrible, but it's also IRONIC, since it appears that, in addition to everything else, ad-tech is a fraud, a bezzle.

3/

Bezzle was John Kenneth Galbraith's term for "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it." That is, a rotten log that has yet to be turned over.

4/

Bezzles unwind slowly, then all at once. We've had some important peeks under ad-tech's rotten log, and they're increasing in both intensity and velocity. If you follow @Chronotope, you've had a front-row seat to the
INTERNET
Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow
@doctorow
It's been eight years since @aaronsw took his own life. Aaron had been charged with 13 felonies under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (#CFAA) for violating the terms of service on the @JSTOR database of scholarly articles.

1/


Prosecutors Stephen Heymann and Carmen Ortiz didn't dispute that Aaron was allowed to access the articles he retrieved. Rather, they said that the WAY he accessed them (using a script instead of clicking on links) was a terms-of-service violation and hence a crime.

2/

In other words: any business could conjure a felony out of thin air by making you click through an unreadable garbage-novella of legalese proscribing the use of a service they granted you access to. Violate any of those terms and you face a prison sentence.

3/

This isn't law as we know it, it's Felony Contempt of Business Model, and the most alarming thing was that this interpretation of the CFAA wasn't completely ridiculous, given how badly drafted that law is.

4/

Ronald Reagan signed CFAA into law. Fed prosecutors had been seeking broad authority to punish "hacking" and had drawn up an absurdly broad definition of cybercrime that would give them latitude to go after anyone they didn't like.

5/
ALL
Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
As the Qanon prophecies fail and the cult-members struggle to resolve their cognitive dissonance, it's a good time to revisit the history of paranoid, conspiratorial political movements in American history - the "paranoid style" that has dominated since the Revolution.

1/


After all, the very first skirmishes of the US war of independence were based on a conspiracy theory: that the levy on tea was a prelude to a sellout of the colonists to transnational mercantalist interests. US politics have always been conspiratorial.

2/

I found @zacharykarabell's @politico history of the Know Nothing party especially useful, as it tells the story of what happens when surging, paranoid, fractious political movements

The American Party was a secret 19th century organization founded on a conspiracy theory: that Irish immigrants were secretly planning a takeover of the US on behalf of the Pope.

4/
HISTORY

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Jim Baird
Jim Baird
@JimBair62221006
I previously 👇 documented 20 mechanisms through which climate change is 𝘢𝘭𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘺 disrupting food production.

Below I am adding to the list including several newly documented mechanisms. 

 *thread*


Several primary impacts relate to altered soil & plant chemistry & biology:

1. Disruption of the phosphorous cycle - the second most vital element for plants after nitrogen


2. Decreased content of key nutrients in major

3. Reduced chill hours required for many plants to bloom normally in the

Other additional primary impacts include:

4. Fossil fuel pollution impacts on crops - this is not a result of climate change per se, but is included since it is due to the same root cause (fossil fuel use):
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Ben See
Ben See
@ClimateBen
The forests of Russia, Mongolia, Canada, Scandinavia and the US will experience unprecedented destructive heat by 2029 with staggering consequences for life on Earth.


Feedback loops created by permafrost melt & wildfire destruction represent just a few of the terrifying effects of climate change on boreal forest ecosystems, which are particularly at risk to rising temperatures. ⚠️🔥

https://t.co/zZNKrRnqoZ

Massive wildfires are already here.


More forest fires are burning in the Arctic in recent years than any time in the last 10,000 years.

🔺these massive arctic fires are showing worrying signs of becoming a vicious cycle

Wildfire-related carbon releases from permafrost regions will quadruple within decades.

Arctic wildfires, impacted by global warming, are in turn contributing to more climate breakdown.

🔺An increase in boreal & tundra fires in the future will enhance permafrost thawing.
CLIMATE CHANGE
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John Hayward
John Hayward
@Doc_0
Just as no amount of flat temperature data would dissuade the climate cult, so no amount of flat (or even negative!) data on mask effectiveness will shake the faith of the Church of Covid. Beautiful Theories cannot be disproven by mere information.

The "Covid emergency" will never be over. It will mutate and seek out new missions when this particular virus threat abates, repurposing its funding and clinging to its power. They're already talking up the "next pandemic" and how we must forever remain at DEFCON 2 to be ready.

Masks are now a visible and tangible symbol of an entire agenda. Its champions will use every means possible to force you to wear them forever, including corporate pressure, their new favorite tool. Expect commercial mask requirements to linger, especially big corporations.

True believers, meanwhile, will wear their masks with grim determination and scowl ostentatiously at everyone who refuses to join them. It's a new virtue signal that will not go away any time soon. Mask scolding is a quick, easy, heady power rush.

All the while, studies will keep rolling out that masks don't help, and might even hurt. That was fairly common medical knowledge before the pandemic began, but it was aggressively suppressed when masks became a political symbol, and a totem for people desperate to DO SOMETHING.
CLIMATE CHANGE
Stump Up For Trees
Stump Up For Trees
@Stumpupfortrees
Long thread here... from Keith, on tree guards:

I really don’t want to spread 120,000 plastic tree guards across the side of our lovely hill, the hill where I grew up and now farm, on the eastern edge of the Black Mountains. So, I’ve taken a good look at the pros,... 1/25


the cons and the alternatives, to try and decide rationally, which is the best approach for our plant on the Bryn Arw.

It has become the accepted norm in the UK that to plant a tree, you need to put your sapling in the ground and then wrap a plastic tree guard around it.

This is simply ‘how it’s done’ now. This practice uses a huge amount of plastic; worse still, it disperses plastic extremely efficiently around the countryside. In some rural places, un-retrieved tree guards are by far the biggest source of plastic pollution.

And yet the first commercial plastic tree guards only came on the market 38 years ago. There are many perfectly healthy woodlands and trees that are older than this, and which became established without plastic – which begs the question: do we really need guards?


Plastic tree guards have several uses, some of which did revolutionise tree planting when they first came out. In particular, they:
•protect your saplings from things that want to eat them;
•provide a microclimate, which enhances tree growth, according to the manufacturers;
CLIMATE CHANGE
Georgiegirl
Georgiegirl
@Georgie29009754
So What Really Went Down During The Flood In High River Alberta ? Was Something Else Going On ~ DUMB Question? The High River Flood 5 Years Ago - Heartland

What’s The Big Business In Town ~ High River Ab?

https://t.co/TiqRwudadP


Interesting ....And Then We Have That Fundraiser ~ Tom Jackson


Tom Has A Big Heart ♥️ Great Read ~ The People Connected https://t.co/T5Xf5yJM59


Stay With Me And Let’s See Where This Leads Us Q Patriots!
Look Here 👇 What’s #yyc & #yql ?
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Jaya_Upadhyaya
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GHATI SUBRAMANYA, DODDABALLAPURA (KAR)
#bharatmandir

One of the most important place for snake worship.
The murtis of Kartikeya and Narasimha are self-manifested.
There is an anthill which is opposite the shrine. Bhaktas pour milk on it as part of rituals.


Here Subramanya performed penance in the form of snake. He sought protection from Narsimha for Nagas from Sri Vishnu’s vehicle Garuda, known for his dislike towards serpents.
The Pushya Suddha Shasti is one of the biggest festivals here believed to be appearance day of Subramanya


It was in this region where Subramanya vanquished Ghatikasura, the demon. Hence called Ghati Subramanya.
Childless couples visit here to seek blessings for getting a child.
The installation of snake murtis near the shrine is believed to be an auspicious act.


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To ensure that both are visible to bhaktas at the same time, a huge mirror is placed in the rear in the sanctum sanctorum.
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HORANADU ANNAPOORNESHWARI, CHIKMAGALUR (KAR)
#bharatmandir

Annapoorneshwari is the Devi of nutrition and food. The literal meaning of Annapoorneshwari is “Feeding one and all”. Anyone who comes here is offered meals and shelter within the premises.
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Maharshi Agastya is believed to have done pratishtha here.

Once, Shiva and Parvati had an argument. Shiva declared everything in the world including food to be Maya or illusion. To prove him wrong, Devi Parvati disappeared resulting in entire Earth becoming still.


Taking pity, Devi appeared as Annapoorna and relieved everyone.
Another belief is that once Shiva beheaded Brahma and his skull got stuck in Shiva’s hand. He was cursed that till the skull is not full of food or grains, it will remain stuck to his hands.


Shiva went everywhere and asked for food but the skull was never full. He finally came here and Maa Annapoorna filled the skull with grains and reversed Shiva’s curse.

It is believed that who ever visits Devi Annapoorna here will never be without food in their lives.
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श्रीमाली हितेश अवस्थी...
@HiteshAwasthi89
#Thread
12 Most Powerful Hanuman Mantras

Hanuman ji is the Hindu God of strength, valor, agility, and wisdom. He is considered as the incarnation (avatar) of bhagwan Shiva. Hanuman ji is the symbol of devotion and dedication. He is the greatest devotee of Prabhu Shri Ram. 1/n


Hanuman ji is known by several names such as Bajrangabali, Mahabali, Maruti Nandan, Pawanputra, Mahaveer, and Anjaneya. Hanuman ji is the son of Bhagwan Vayu, the wind god.

God Hanuman played a prominent part in rescuing Mata Sitafrom the bondage of demon King of Lanka, Ravana.


One can worship Hanuman ji by chanting Hanuman Mantras. There are many different types of Hanuman Mantras, each fulfilling a specific purpose. Hanuman Mantras help to beget the blessings of Mahabali Hanuman for success. 3/n


Let’s explore these powerful Hanuman Mantras one by one. Here’s the list for you:

1. Hanuman Moola Mantra
!! Om Hanumate Namah !!
ऊँ हनुमते नम:

You can chant the “Hanuman Moola Mantra if you usually face problems and obstacles in your life.4/n
#hanumanjanmotsav


However, the Human Moola Mantra is also a very powerful success mantra.

It’s a Kaarya Siddhi Mantra.

It is highly advised that all those who usually face obstacles and problems in their life should chant the Hanuman Moola Mantra. 5/n
#hanumanjanmotsav
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sriram
sriram
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Sri Varaha Charama Shlokam

sthithE manasi susvasthE sarIrE sathi yO nara:
dhAthusAmyE sthithE smarthA visvarUpam cha maamajam (1)

tathastham mriyamANam thu kAshtA paashaNa sannibham
aham smarAmi madh bhaktham nayAmi paramAm gathim (2)


Meaning:

Oh Bhumi Devi! The entire universe is my body (sarIram).
I do not have births or deaths .

When my bhakthAs with mahA visvAsam (utmost faith) surrender to me, while they are still in a state of tranquil mind and healthy body and reflect about Me as as SarvAdharan (root cause
of all),
NiyanthA (One who commands from within),
sarva sEshi (the ultimate),

aasrayaNeeyan (One who is fit to be worshipped),
Sarva VyApthan (all-pervasive) and
Nithya sannihithan (One who is always near),
THEN
I think of them at their last moments, when they are totally unconscious like a log or a stone
and lead them by archirAdhi

maargam to My parama padham and bless them to have nithya kaimkarya bhAgyam to Me there.
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Steve
Steve
@braidedmanga
Ivor Cummins has been wrong (or lying) almost entirely throughout this pandemic and got paid handsomly for it.

He has been wrong (or lying) so often that it will be nearly impossible for me to track every grift, lie, deceit, manipulation he has pulled. I will use...


... other sources who have been trying to shine on light on this grifter (as I have tried to do, time and again:


Example #1: "Still not seeing Sweden signal versus Denmark really"... There it was (Images attached).
19 to 80 is an over 300% difference.

Tweet: https://t.co/36FnYnsRT9


Example #2 - "Yes, I'm comparing the Noridcs / No, you cannot compare the Nordics."

I wonder why...

Tweets: https://t.co/XLfoX4rpck / https://t.co/vjE1ctLU5x


Example #3 - "I'm only looking at what makes the data fit in my favour" a.k.a moving the goalposts.

Tweets: https://t.co/vcDpTu3qyj / https://t.co/CA3N6hC2Lq
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