Does anyone remember when @DavidCornDC and I wrote about the #Groundswell group led by Ginni Thomas and organized by Cleta Mitchell?

The organizer of yesterday’s insurrection is one of the top influencers in that group — JennyBeth Martin, formerly of Tea Party Patriots.

Because no one calls them out, and because the IRS granted this group of orgs their coveted nonprofit status and further loosened restrictions and disclosures for them, they’ve been allowed to grow a seditious, criminal enterprise, led by the spouse of a sitting SCOTUS justice.

28 Recommended Books That Will Improve Your Writing And Freelance Business Right Now:

📖 On Writing by Stephen King

Stephen King’s classic will appeal even to those who avoid King’s renowned horror-packed tales. In this book, King discusses how he came to be the writer we know today.

📖 The Writing Life by Annie Dillard

Annie writes about how hard it is to write and how sometimes it is necessary to destroy paragraphs, phrases and words to re-form them as something even better.

📖 Word Work: Surviving and Thriving as a Writer by Bruce Holland Rogers

Word Work is packed with practical advice for overcoming procrastination, finding happiness in writing and even conquering writer’s block. It also covers how to handle rejection and success.

📖 Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

Bird by Bird is an essential part of any writer’s toolbox. In this work, Lamott shares herself and her craft with readers, including anecdotes that tie the pieces together into all-around great writing.

To the Victoria Embankment, there to take our Government-mandated exercise by following the lines of two waterways, the Bloomsbury Ditch & the #CockAndPye Ditch. These were channels which drained the marshland that surrounded the village of St Giles - current-day Covent Garden.

The walk is one devised by @teabolton in the second volume of his guide to London’s lost rivers, & follows the line of the 2 linked ditches from the Thames at Victoria Embankment Gardens & then back to Cleopatra’s Needle. #CockAndPye

"With no known natural watercourses between the Fleet, to the east, and the Tyburn, to the west, Covent Garden and Soho are gaps in the London river map. It is, however, quite possible that the ditches rechannelled small streams that existed before the earliest maps" - @teabolton

The fields of St Giles-in-the-Fields were notoriously boggy. St Giles itself stood by the main London-Oxford road (as in Oxford Street), but was sufficiently isolated that when, c. 1120, Henry I's wife Matilda founded a monastery here, it doubled as a hospital for lepers.

St Giles always had a marsh-tang of misery & sedition about it. It remained a leper colony - on & off - until the Reformation, & was the centre of Sir John Oldcastle's Lollard rebellion in 1414. (Sir John was executed at what's now the Oxford St-Tottenham Ct Rd x-roads in 1417.)

THREAD — what history tells us

It’s a short book. But one of the most consequential in American history. Haunting.

And I keep going back to it now.

The Strange Career of Jim Crow, by C. Vann Woodward

1/

And it’s scary as hell to say it, but the moment we’re in, and the next 2 years at least, greatly resemble the moment that the progress of Reconstruction hung in the balance.

(Let’s be clear about how dangerous ‘22 is. With a new round of districting

2/

primaries and a mid-term, some of the very extremists who fomented the insurrection could gain MORE power)

Strange Career is about how the Reconstruction era became the Jim Crow era, which lasted close to a century.

And it’s primary lesson could not be more clear:

3/

“The South’s adoption of extreme racism was due not so much to a conversion as it was to a relaxation of the opposition. All the elements of fear, jealousy, hatred & fanaticism had long been present, as they are present in various degrees of intensity in society. What enabled...”

“...them to rise to dominance was not so much cleverness or ingenuity as it was a general weakening and discrediting of the numerous forces that had hitherto kept them in check”

In the wake of that “relaxation,” dedicated extreme forces took over, locking Jim Crow into place

4/

The faces of the insurrectionist, anti-American mob that attacked the country have inspired me to re-read George Orwell's "The Road to Wigan Pier".

One of his lesser known, but IMHO best books. Thread.

First, so many right wing extremists tweeting Orwell quotes right now, as if he would have supported an attack on democracy. Read his work. Here's what HE believed, in his own words:

Orwell was a socialist. In fact, he was fighting against fascism in the Spanish Civil War when the book was published in 1937. He took a bullet in the

I'm re-reading the book because of what Orwell writes about class.

Buying plane tickets, purchasing weapons of war and body armor, taking time off from work, that takes time and money.

This is why Orwell is so interesting. Who are the people most prone to fascism?

RIPPLE RESPONDS
I’ve been asked to provide my thoughts on @Ripple’s Answer. I quickly looked over the Answer late last night. It’s 93 pages and I spent less than hour reading it over so please take that into consideration. I plan to review it in much more detail in the coming

days and will likely revisit these initial thoughts. Before I provide any thoughts, I should warn you that if you ask 3 different attorneys to respond, you are likely to get 3 different opinions. Also, I always provide my honest assessment even if it’s not what I know people want

to hear. Personally, I was disappointed in the Answer. My disappointment means nothing and has no impact on the issues. In fact, if this case is going to trial, I would have advised Ripple to Answer the Complaint much like it did. My disappointment isn’t a reflection regarding

the skill of Ripple’s trial lawyers or in-house counsel @s_alderoty or regarding the merits of the defense. Ripple’s lawyers know much more than I do with respect to securities’ laws. I’m disappointed because, after reading the Answer, I’m less confident that a settlement will

transpire within the next 6-9 months. Instead, it looks like it may be a very long legal battle ahead. There are two ways to write pleadings in Court. One way is what’s called Notice Pleading. All you have to do is to provide the minimum amount of information necessary to provide

1. Very pleased that my article with @MBEGriffiths about the hostile environment policy has been published in the journal Critical Social Policy, after over four years of work on it. Thread on some of what we say.

2. We look at the origins, extent, operationalisation and impacts of the hostile environment in the labour and housing markets, public services, pricing, healthcare and education.

3. It is a policy over which, by design, the government lost control because it relies on third parties to implement it on the ground.

4. The modern policy has long antecedents but from around 2012 the approach was dramatically and recklessly expanded and any pretence at 'balance' by making immigration compliance easier was abandoned.

5. We argue the hostile environment was never an evidence-driven policy expected to achieve measurable immigration outcomes but rather an ideological policy propelled by a set of moral values.

Hey @caroljsroth, I was just listening to your podcast with @JesseKellyDC and I wanted correct some errors concerning the Dickinson/Jackson duel of 1806. I am working on my PhD thesis related to Jackson and host the @AgeofJacksonPod. 1/

The origins of their feud begin not with Rachel Jackson’s honor, but rather over horseracing. Jackson was a horseracing enthusiast, as were most southern gentlemen of the planter class. Cutting a long story short, it comes down to money. 2/

Basically, Dickinson was in on a bet against Jackson’s horse but withdrew and paid the forfeit. The problem is rumors began to fly that Jackson wasn’t thrilled about this, because they apparently wanted to use promissory notes as payment. 3/

Things start to get very testy between the two men are insults are exchanged and circulate around Nashville. Eventfully things get even more public when all this gets published in the newspapers, with the two calling each other cowards more or less. 4/

So, what about Rachel? That’s the funny thing, Rachel is not mentioned in any of the newspapers and in the letters between the men and their associates leading up to the duel. I’m not saying it was not a contributing factor, but it hard to find solid evidence for it. 5/

I had set myself a goal of 35 books for the year, but lack of travel meant I could squeeze in a fair bit more. I’ve tried to read more fiction, but not very successfully (most of the books here are non-fiction). Nonetheless, here is my reading list for 2020. (1/9)

1. The Quantum Spy — David Ignatius
2. The Siege of Mecca — Yaroslav Trofimov
3. The Only Plane in the Sky — Garrett Graff
4. American Spy — Lauren Wilkinson
5. Rise and Kill First — Ronen Bergman
6. Return to Sri Lanka — Razeen Sally
7. Scale -- Geoffrey West (2/9)

8. Bridgital Nation — Roopa Purushottaman & N Chandrasekaran
9. Backstage — Montek Singh Ahluwalia
10. Spillover -- David Quammen
11. The Theory the Would not Die -- Sharon McGraves
12. The End of October -- Lawrence Wright
13. Team of Teams — Stanley McChrystal (3/9)

14. Galileo’s Daughter — Dava Sobel 15. The Gated Republic — Shankkar Aiyar
16. Powerful — Patty McCord
17. The Paladin — David Ignatius
18. India Moving — Chinmaya Tumbe
19. How Innovation Works — Matt Ridley
20. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland — Lewis Carroll (re-read) (4/9)

21. How China Escaped the Poverty Trap — Yuen Yuen Ang
22. Phantoms in the Brain — VS Ramachandran & Sandra Blakeslee
23. Seeing like a State — James C Scott
24. El Jefe: The stalking of Chapo Guzman — Alan Feuer (5/9)

Ten minutes until The High Republic launch event live on YouTube! #StarWars #TheHighRepublic #DisneyBooks #DelReyBooks

Here's the link...
https://t.co/11x3FME1ph

Okay, here we go! The boss herself, Kathleen Kennedy, introduces a The High Republic trailer! #StarWarsTheHighRepublic

Michael Siglain giving a bit of history on the project...

There's the team, all looking Luminous! @msiglain @claudiagray @CharlesSoule @justinaireland @cavanscott @djolder @KristinBaver

They are all discussing their specific experience developing the project at various points along the way. Speaking about working at the Ranch, Cavan Scott said they had to "literally chuck us out!"

More ?s I'm asking when looking at curricula, policies, practices, etc. 1) "Cultural diversity" "Respect Diversity" ... how are you defining culture? Diversity? 2) Where are you asking for reflection & naming of positionality? Beyond right/wrong narratives that avoid complexity.

3) What group(s) and culture(s) are you framing as default and normal? Who are you othering and dismissing? 4) In your clinical evaluations, how are you asking students to demonstrate "respect for diversity"? 5) Are you lumping together caring, altruism, and social justice?

6) Where are you asking students and providing guidance about honoring patient leadership and autonomy, not merely supporting patients voicing concerns?

7) Safety in clinical evaluations: How are you defining safety beyond medication errors, falls, etc. Where are you asking students to consider cultural safety and demonstrate trauma-informed healing-centered care?

8) Where do you give students the space to PRACTICE inclusion and antiracism and genuine apologies with guidance & a clear theoretical stance? 9) How do you de-center niceness and deservingness and normalize dialogue through conflict?

All in one place: our #BestiveBooks favourite-reads-of-the-year advent. Day 1 brought the joys of How to Read A Book by @kwamealexander & Melissa Sweet – a perfect starting point #BestiveBooks 1/28

Day 2 offered us a Lift created by @dsantat & @bottomshelfbks , published by @LittleBrownYR #BestiveBooks 2/28

Day 3 opened up new possibilities with How to be a Butterfly by @LauraMakesBook & @catellronca #BestiveBooks 3/28

Day 4 addressed the critical issue of coiffure-maintenance with The Hairdo that Got Away by @JosephACoelho & @fionalumbers #BestiveBooks 4/28

Day 5 got creative with How to Spot an Artist by Danielle Krysa #BestiveBooks 5/28

There's more today on the weirdness of a housing boom in the midst of the worst economic crisis in 300 years, helped by temporary tax breaks that will expire - probably before Lockdown3 comes to an end.

It's always puzzling why people aren't more repulsed when lenders report "soaring" house prices; we wouldn't, for example, welcome "soaring" gas or electricity prices - or soaring bread prices. But in any case that's what Halifax says they have been doing:

"Soaring" sounds very different if you're hoping to be a first-time buyer than if you're a potential seller who thinks 'ah - freebie time'. That something for nothing mentality has led politicians for decades to think it's bad politics to have prices fall.

...and to spend taxpayers' money propping them up (from mortgage interest relief in the late 1980s to Help to Buy to the current stamp duty holiday). But the reality is that unless your next move in the housing market is to downsize - rising house prices work against you.

Today the estate agency chain Chestertons highlights a huge imbalance in supply and demand: “There were 4% more homes for sale in 2020 than the previous year compared to a more than 40% rise in buyers." And apparently the outlook for the market is therefore 'positive'.

It's often said that the indigenous people of South America never developed a system of writing.

But this isn't entirely true. In fact, they created a unique and complex system of notation based on the tying of knots, known as quipu, which remain undeciphered to this day.

The quipu were usually made from string, spun from cotton fibers, or the fleece of camelid animals like the alpaca and llama.

The cords stored information with knots tied in vast assemblages of string, sometimes containing thousands of threads.

In some analysed quipu, the combinations of thread length, colour, knot type and knot position allow for up to 95 possible combinations, which could represent numbers, symbols or even sounds.

The Inca people used them for collecting data and keeping records, monitoring taxes, conducting censuses, keeping track of dates, and for military organization, all with immense success.

One early European eyewitness Hernando Pizarro records one early sighting of these quipu.

In fact, these quipu were the only system of notation used to administrate the Incas’ society, a vast stretch of land the same size as the Western Roman empire in Europe, containing more than 10 million people – all of which operated without a single word being written down.