It's #TwitterBookLaunch day. The wine has been unscrewed, the prawns de-veined for the most part, and its time to celebrate twenty brilliant books published during lockdown. There'll be 2 parts to the thread but please scroll through, share and buy books if you can. So -

In #Empireland, @sathnam shows how our imperial legacy shapes Britain today. 'Intensely readable..mindful of complexity' says @mrjamesob, 'perfectly-judged' says @jonathancoe, this important book is available from - for instance - @kewbookshop https://t.co/7f7BChWzcT
- and here's #HowWeMet, 'a beautiful, refreshing and honest memoir about family, love, inheritance and loss' @nikeshshukla. 'Beautiful, witty, romantic' says @VivGroskop Quick, join Huma in conversation with @SaimaMir at 11, on IGTV via @eandtbooks - https://t.co/PKtzngOMQg
Best title of the week goes to #MrsDeathMissesDeath from poet-turned-novelist @salenagodden, 'a fantastically imaginative story of life, death and everything in between' @idriselba. Beautiful special editions available from many indies, e.g @NewhamBookshop https://t.co/KmSQLSkcZI
And happy publication day to @colette_snowden and @Ofmooseandmen for 'Captain Jesus' (another pretty good title). Loss, family trauma, guilt and the natural world. Signed copies available from @ChorltonBkshop or order from the many indies below -
https://t.co/S9tcuFMjHw
Congratulations to @LisaGardnerBks for #BeforeSheDisappeared, the brand new thriller from the author of 'When You See Me'. 'Lisa...knocks it out of the park' says @tessgerritsen 'Frankie Elkin is a heroine for the ages, a fierce, female Shane'.
https://t.co/RZvGCkIBWV
A 'stunning new literary thriller...a chilling take on art, illness and power', #TakeMeApart by @SaraXSligar. 'This book has everything' says @CrimeReads, 'a raw unfiltered twist on gaslighting' says @aramintahall. From @text_publishing, more praise here- https://t.co/Lq8oaRu2o1
And congratulations to @sylviaapetter for All the Beautiful Liars, a debut about making peace with the past. A richly evocative picture of Central Europe in the decades after the war, it's published by @EyeAndLightning books and you can read more here - https://t.co/XELZ0Obco1
Congratulations to Musa Okwonga @Okwonga for 'In the End, It Was All About Love'. A journey of loss and acceptance based in Berlin, it's about love, sexuality, spirituality and racism and you can find it via @RoughTradeBooks here - https://t.co/ryKk3WA4tg
Finally for PART ONE, join the brilliant screenwriter @jackthorne for #afternoontea as part of the @Soc_of_Authors events series and, if you can, please donate to the Authors' Contingency Fund, helping to support authors facing hardship. Details here - https://t.co/rW1gvWVF1R
That's Part One. Please mingle, share and look back through other #TwitterBookLaunch threads for more brilliant titles. Back after coffee...

More from Culture

Great article from @AsheSchow. I lived thru the 'Satanic Panic' of the 1980's/early 1990's asking myself "Has eveyrbody lost their GODDAMN MINDS?!"


The 3 big things that made the 1980's/early 1990's surreal for me.

1) Satanic Panic - satanism in the day cares ahhhh!

2) "Repressed memory" syndrome

3) Facilitated Communication [FC]

All 3 led to massive abuse.

"Therapists" -and I use the term to describe these quacks loosely - would hypnotize people & convince they they were 'reliving' past memories of Mom & Dad killing babies in Satanic rituals in the basement while they were growing up.

Other 'therapists' would badger kids until they invented stories about watching alligators eat babies dropped into a lake from a hot air balloon. Kids would deny anything happened for hours until the therapist 'broke through' and 'found' the 'truth'.

FC was a movement that started with the claim severely handicapped individuals were able to 'type' legible sentences & communicate if a 'helper' guided their hands over a keyboard.

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THREAD: 12 Things Everyone Should Know About IQ

1. IQ is one of the most heritable psychological traits – that is, individual differences in IQ are strongly associated with individual differences in genes (at least in fairly typical modern environments). https://t.co/3XxzW9bxLE


2. The heritability of IQ *increases* from childhood to adulthood. Meanwhile, the effect of the shared environment largely fades away. In other words, when it comes to IQ, nature becomes more important as we get older, nurture less.
https://t.co/UqtS1lpw3n


3. IQ scores have been increasing for the last century or so, a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect. https://t.co/sCZvCst3hw (N ≈ 4 million)

(Note that the Flynn effect shows that IQ isn't 100% genetic; it doesn't show that it's 100% environmental.)


4. IQ predicts many important real world outcomes.

For example, though far from perfect, IQ is the single-best predictor of job performance we have – much better than Emotional Intelligence, the Big Five, Grit, etc. https://t.co/rKUgKDAAVx https://t.co/DWbVI8QSU3


5. Higher IQ is associated with a lower risk of death from most causes, including cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, most forms of cancer, homicide, suicide, and accident. https://t.co/PJjGNyeQRA (N = 728,160)
🌺कैसे बने गरुड़ भगवान विष्णु के वाहन और क्यों दो भागों में फटी होती है नागों की जिह्वा🌺

महर्षि कश्यप की तेरह पत्नियां थीं।लेकिन विनता व कद्रु नामक अपनी दो पत्नियों से उन्हे विशेष लगाव था।एक दिन महर्षि आनन्दभाव में बैठे थे कि तभी वे दोनों उनके समीप आकर उनके पैर दबाने लगी।


प्रसन्न होकर महर्षि कश्यप बोले,"मुझे तुम दोनों से विशेष लगाव है, इसलिए यदि तुम्हारी कोई विशेष इच्छा हो तो मुझे बताओ। मैं उसे अवश्य पूरा करूंगा ।"

कद्रू बोली,"स्वामी! मेरी इच्छा है कि मैं हज़ार पुत्रों की मां बनूंगी।"
विनता बोली,"स्वामी! मुझे केवल एक पुत्र की मां बनना है जो इतना बलवान हो की कद्रू के हज़ार पुत्रों पर भारी पड़े।"
महर्षि बोले,"शीघ्र ही मैं यज्ञ करूंगा और यज्ञ के उपरांत तुम दोनो की इच्छाएं अवश्य पूर्ण होंगी"।


महर्षि ने यज्ञ किया,विनता व कद्रू को आशीर्वाद देकर तपस्या करने चले गए। कुछ काल पश्चात कद्रू ने हज़ार अंडों से काले सर्पों को जन्म दिया व विनता ने एक अंडे से तेजस्वी बालक को जन्म दिया जिसका नाम गरूड़ रखा।जैसे जैसे समय बीता गरुड़ बलवान होता गया और कद्रू के पुत्रों पर भारी पड़ने लगा


परिणामस्वरूप दिन प्रतिदिन कद्रू व विनता के सम्बंधों में कटुता बढ़ती गयी।एकदिन जब दोनो भ्रमण कर रहीं थी तब कद्रू ने दूर खड़े सफेद घोड़े को देख कर कहा,"बता सकती हो विनता!दूर खड़ा वो घोड़ा किस रंग का है?"
विनता बोली,"सफेद रंग का"।
तो कद्रू बोली,"शर्त लगाती हो? इसकी पूँछ तो काली है"।