When you do media training for TV interviews, you learn some of the tactics for avoiding difficult questions. I'm speaking about
- deflection
- bridging
- deferring
These skills are key when you face high-level interviews on media.

As my Christmas present to you all, here is a list of my top-10 metal tunes of 2020, in no particular order. It's a mixed bag of genres and styles, but they're all bangers!

First up, The Terror Begins by Make Them Die Slowly. Horror-movie inspired grind/black/industrial from Mick Kenney and Duncan Wilkins.

Next, Northern Irish thrashers @gamabomb, with Lords of the Hellfire Club from their excellent new album Sea Savage.

Now for something a bit off the beaten track: brilliant New York black metal experimentalists @imperialnyc's City

Time for something a bit more accessible: this year's best symphonic metal from Sweden's @eleine. Here's the title track from the fantastic 'Dancing in Hell' album.

For months, but especially after the new CDC school recs came out, supporters of reopening all schools now have been peddling the idea that schools across the country have been open all year successfully. This argument is used to push for ALL schools to be opened now.

A long 🧵

Though some schools in the U.S. are open & doing well with safety protocols, many places used as examples of opening success have profoundly unsafe schools & are neglecting covid safety. Some have been lucky not to have outbreaks and other issues--it's not that they're safe.

In the last few weeks, I've been in touch with teachers in Ohio, Florida, Texas, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Utah, and Pennsylvania.

(Thanks to @eduwonkette_jen @GeoRebekah and @saribethrose for the threads and forums that have helped me meet SO MANY teachers this year).

I collected the accounts of dozens of teachers. Obviously, this isn't an exhaustive list and it isn't a study! It's what teachers on the ground in some states are experiencing. And it's easy to see why so many in our profession are so frightened this year.

Here's the list:

There are currently open schools in the US that are being hailed as "successful" that have:

▪️no safety protocols at all besides contact cleaning, in some districts
▪️some districts with no mask mandate
▪️classes in windowless rooms, some with full classes of 20-30

My thoughts about Covid in schools-
Our studies are crap. We haven't put appropriate resources into studying this. Merging "in-person school" v "remote school" across the country makes little sense since there's so much heterogeneity in what "in-person school" looks like. 🧵

A teacher in Louisiana in an area with high rates of covid & in-person school, has a class with just 2 students in it. The entire school has 37 students and 12 staff, in a building that can hold hundreds.
Should this school's data be merged with a school that's fully open?

How would merging such disparate data, and everything in-between impact our understanding of Covid in schools? What about when we compare it to the rates in children who are in virtual school?

Things often not considered that should be... Are kids in pods? Are kids doing virtual school in community centers/ churches/ other group settings? Are youth sports or other extracurricular school activities (music, etc) happening in-person. Heterogeneity exist in this group too.

What's asymptomatic testing of children in the community like? We know that children are under-tested, how can we say something is safe if we are NOT TESTING children at the same rate as the rest of the population. We can't embrace the "don't ask (test) don't tell" apprach here.

with all good intentions, the result is not very useful: "Predatory journals and publishers are entities that prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship and .. 1/

... are characterized by false or misleading information, deviation from best editorial and publication practices, a lack of transparency, and/or the use of aggressive and indiscriminate solicitation practices.” 2/

one of mistakes I think the consensus model made is that it has too much circular bootstrapping. Something is predatory because what we do not find predatory is not. E.g. the point about transparency. Just check how "transparent" some major publishers are in @RetractionWatch. 3/

the "best editorial and publication practices" turns out to focus on same basic agreements, mostly among publishers, and not really about doing quality science. It's an administrative rule. 4/

"Aggressive, indiscriminate solicitation" is also a rule really hard to apply. Elsevier repeatedly breaks this rule, and other more traditional publishers do too, tho at a lower frequency. Do the authors want to claim Elsevier is a predatory publisher? 5/