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1. From convo on @Morning_Joe today about @DrIbram's new article which asks that progressive policy not be blamed for D losses/underperformance.

One of my main concerns is intraparty factionalism/fighting. Everything a "moderate" & "progressive"

 2. D fights- a R gets a vote. Certainly radical (and yes, defunding police departments IS radical) policy proposals that fall on the outside bands of the distribution are less attractive to this idealized "swing" voter who is, in our minds eye" always a high info, high reasoning.
3. I guess you'd call them a "fine dining" type voter. But we KNOW that actually, most swing voters are NOT like this. Don't believe me- check out @axios Swing Voter Project, which ran focus groups with Obama to Trump voters through the whole cycle. https://t.co/B3WEyCLZF9
4. Indeed, what @richthau learned about America's "deciders" is likely to haunt his sleep for ever as it personified a sticker I keep in my office which is a quote from George Carlin: "Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups." (K.I.M. when we talk "stupid"
5. on my threads about people, we're not talking IQ, or overall stupid. We're talking civics. We're talking about political literacy. Very smart, successful people can't name their senators or their governor & are thus, civically stupid. And I'm sorry, not sorry for labeling them
6. as such. As a country, as a political culture, we're big on rights, but not on responsibilities that come with them. In other words, we're shirkers. Now, to be fair, its not really our fault. Once it became clear that grifting was a lot easier with a dumb public, the dumbing
7. of the public became a feature, not a bug. We basically have no political culture, certainly not one that tells citizens "you must tend to the gardens of your democracy to ensure it grows strong & stays healthy" and that is something we need to start fixing NOW so that in
8. 30 years, we can start to yield some benefits. But I digress. The political commentary/analysis has one frame, one paradigm to discuss political phenomena under, and like many things in the polarized era, it is no longer applicable- but the analysis forges on anyway. Here's a
9. a counterfactual that will demonstrate how little issues matter to election outcomes. The entire GOP has shifted far to the Right & is running on defund the police. I mean think about the GOP platform this fall. That platform, which they didn't bother to pen, was "whatever our
10. aspiring dictator says. And what WAS the aspiring dictator saying? He was saying he planned to restart the family separation program on the border and orphan MORE children heartlessly to join the 600+ already in the fed gov's permanent custody. If you are raped or dying of
11. cancer MAYBE we'll let you get an abortion to save your own life. Maybe. Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act- all gutted. I could keep going. Did I mention that the modal position of your average congressional/Senate Republican on the question of "what
12. should the federal gov do to help Americans survive economic disruption from COVID?" is NOTHING. The modal position of Senate Rs- 30+ of them is NO AID. That's bc the entire Republican Party is a party of extremists. All of its positions are now extreme. Its radical wing
13. started to take control of the party in 2010, exerted real influence- I mean enough where the party was radicalized & holding the control hostage- shutting it down over symbolic debt ceiling raises & forces fed workers to go w/o pay, closing down DC, for what amounts to a
14. policy temper-tantrum over Obamacare (they were so upset that 23 million people GOT insurance for the 1st time AND that 100 million of us, for the 1st time got GOOD insurance, insurance that actually paid for everything, that covered preventative shit instead of telling you,
15. if you want mammograms or colonoscopies- pay for it out of pocket. THIS is what had the GOP all a twitter, the biggest irony, of course, being that it was THEIR DAMN PLAN!!! But so extremist & radical was the Republican Party becoming that they shut down the entire country
16. trying to force Obama to veto his own healthcare law. BC THAT's normal behavior from a serious, governing party that appeals to the median voter.

And yet, do you know what happened? In those 2014 Midterms- they GAINED SEATS!!

They completely abandoned the middle of the
17. electorate, they didn't just touch a third rail of American Politics- they RODE that rail like a wave at Mavericks and yet they wiped out the entire Blue Dog Caucus of the Democrats (but only gained a couple more House seats bc @MichaelSteele only left a few behind in his net
18. 63 seat route in the 2010 Midterms, when again, right after destroying the American middle class, as the American economy was still sliding down from their previous management, their superior electioneering led to their 2010 pounding of the Ds by turning centrist policy
19. Obamacare/ACA) into RADICAL policy.

Which brings me to my point. The GOP has been able to fall into total control of extremists (the metamorphosis completed when Trump became the nominee & then cemented the GOP --> MAGA version of the GOP with his "thread the needle" 2016
20. which was accomplished in no small part by the Rep Party's strategic efforts to get Dems to beat themselves (a strategy they are keen to deploy on Dems again for the 2022 Midterms) and PAY NO PENALTY WITH THE MIDDLE OF THE ELECTORATE. Yet, at the same time, the Democrats have
21. taken great pains to be as appealing to moderates/the middle as possible & have made, arguably no gains. They won the presidency, yes, but not just bc of "moderates." They won bc of massive participation surges of Dem coalition voters- in order of surge size-college ed whites
22. Latinos, and Black voters. And its easy to point at the surge size adv of college ed whites & say "see, its not worth investing in voters of color its too hard to turn them out" but what you're doing there (@davidshor) is voters of color are by & large (outside of GA & THANK
23. GOD, the state party chairs in MI, WI, PA, & AZ which themselves ran field on low propensity voters of color) ignored by campaigns- not invested in, or dramatically underinvested in, and then their low turnout is pointed at for justification of low investment. Meanwhile, the
24. 1 group, college ed voters most likely to surge on their own, get the most heavy investment. I mean ludicrous investment. So it should be no surprise that they bury everyone else (it wasn't to me- I predicted it, as well as yuge GOP turnout). Again, to win, you have to match
25. the GOP's ballot %. You can win the "ideas" war, but if the GOP outvotes you, you're losing the race. THIS is one reason why they pay no price for their extremism.

The other is that Dems have never bothered to tie the GOP to their extremism.

Again, we'll be changing that.
26. I want to add- if you enjoy these threads, soon they'll be moving to The Cycle, which will be hosted on @SubstackInc. After a few years of doing everything for free (I could afford to, I had W-2 jobs to support my family!) I am now transitioning to trying my hand at
27. media/writing/podcasting/lectures/etc as a career (as well as Super Pac work) in a weird fusion that I believe no one has ever really done at the same time before. I'm excited about it, bc my vision is that my work the Super Pac (I can't wait to reveal the name- its so hard
28. to keep it a secret from y'all!) will inform my writing/reporting/podcast over on The Cycle, and that I can use The Cycle to bring YOU into the Super Pac, and esp into the creative process of the ad creation room and stuff like that. Why? BC that's what I would want if I was
29. you and not me. When I was a prof- I always tried to make my classes my dream class. Something that would have knocked my socks off when I was an undergrad. I will bring the same mentality to The Cycle. Given this is something I am hoping you will be monetarily invested in
30. I very much want it to deliver for you and give you "value added." So, my goal will be to create a substack that gives as much as it takes and makes you feel like you are learning. Believe it or not, I'm actually very risk adverse. I rem how surprised @OldBullTV was to find
31. that out when he 1st reached out about doing a show. Yes, the lady who twice now has proclaimed w no equivocation that Ds would win the House & then then the presidency months ahead of both contests HATES taking risks. And yet here I am, now shoulders deep into launching not
32. one, but TWO W-9 style gigs that will compromise the whole of her financial future: its terrifying! I know I'm the one that's supposed to be uber confident & bad ass-so I'll def not going to admit that I'm terrified. Like getting a root canal- I just want to get it over with!

More from Rachel "The Doc" Bitecofer 📈🔭🍌

Rachel "The Doc" Bitecofer \U0001f4c8\U0001f52d\U0001f34c
Rachel "The Doc" Bitec...
@RachelBitecofer
1. Friends, yesterday we released a sample ad of what how @StrikePac will message against the GOP. Frustratingly, voters were never approached which the frame of the Rep Party's collapse into extremism in the 2020 cycle aside from work from outside groups like @ProjectLincoln,


2. @MeidasTouch, @votevets & other "super pacs" which are essentially grassroots funded organizations that are making use of the "super pac" designation to electioneer. Organizing as a super pac actually affords groups a great deal of flexibility to perform pro-democracy work

3. so despite the "ewww, yuck!" factor of that designation, not all SP's are, in fact, evil entities (other than the fact that so many of you I wholly support a fully publicly funded system w very strict limits & honestly, a 30 day electioneering window per cycle which would

4. decimate a multi-billion $ industry BUT do a great deal of work to save our democracy & that type of system, by the way, is BY FAR, the norm among western democracies. Ours is literally the Wild West of electioneering systems and if there is 1 "fix all" reform that would have

5. the greatest & most immediate impact on pulling our democracy back from the precipice of our democracy it would be a fully publicly funded, tightly regulated election/campaigning system. We don't have one of those right now & if we ever want to reach the majorities that could
POLITICS
Rachel "The Doc" Bitecofer \U0001f4c8\U0001f52d\U0001f34c
Rachel "The Doc" Bitec...
@RachelBitecofer
1. I think so. I don't think the issue are plans. The issue is that the ability of our govn't to function-to create & enact policy- has been seriously abridged the past decade to the point where it can't function. We've seen virtually no legislation this past decade & pretty


2. much none relying on just "regular order." Although the Ds spent almost a year trying w the ACA before giving up & using a procedural trick in the end. Keep in mind, McConnell changed the operation of senate so that all bills, ALL, had to reach 60 vote threshold in the senate

3. That was a MASSIVE change to the legislative filibuster (a massive abuse of it). It creates a super majority requirement for laws that the Framers didn't design. And given the issue of misrepresentation the senate, which is causing a Tyranny of the Minority, its really shut

4. down the federal lawmaking apparatus. If Ds flip these 2 GA senate seats, the legislative filibuster will be right back in the spotlight bc McConnell will use it to lockdown Biden's legislative agenda. And we'll have to see how Biden responds. I agree that Biden needs to give

5. McConnell an opp to change his behavior, but if he doesn't Biden will have to go w EOs or ending the legislative filibuster. Either that, or getting nothing done. The GOP will seek to do to him what they did to Obama- use control of the senate OR the filibuster to prevent
CRYPTO
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Rachel "The Doc" Bitecofer \U0001f4c8\U0001f52d\U0001f34c
Rachel "The Doc" Bitec...
@RachelBitecofer
1. Been excited about @JoeNBC's sustained convo today about @KBAndersen's new book Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America which explains how the Republican Party radicalized OVER ECONOMICS over the past 30 years. It was launched w the radical tax cuts in Reagan's presidency, but

2. as the GOP evolved through the 90s & 2000s they became dogmatic about their economic philosophy- until it became a radical litmus test/position the party followed even when conditions screamed for different policy. It was a MIRACLE the party acted to stabilize the economy at

3. at the end of 2008 when it was crashing down around us (though they just barely did & some didn't and that's bc it was before the Great Purges of 2010,2012, & 2014). America doesn't know the hit job the GOP did on the American economy as they dogmatically pursued tax cuts to

4. the exclusion of everything else while denying any policy that could grow wages or improve the economic lives of the bottom 80% aside from the 2 or 3 times Ds managed to squeeze through policy while in charge (minimum wage increase in 2007-which was the 1st time in a decade

5. and now, of course, its been another decade. It's actually a miracle wages (all wages bc when the min wage is artificially low it affects all the wages above it, that's how you end up w $10 per hr EMTs & teachers) aren't even more out of wack w inflation. As @JoeNBC points out
ECONOMY
Rachel "The Doc" Bitecofer \U0001f4c8\U0001f52d\U0001f34c
Rachel "The Doc" Bitec...
@RachelBitecofer
1. The hot take that "D's need to learn to talk to the other side of the electorate" is absolutely the WRONG take.

I mean my god. Biden, Lincoln, the outside groups: they threw the best persuasion messaging in the history of persuasion campaigns at them.

What Ds need to do is
POLITICS
Rachel "The Doc" Bitecofer \U0001f4c8\U0001f52d\U0001f34c
Rachel "The Doc" Bitec...
@RachelBitecofer
1. Yes, Trump will claim to intend to target GOP senators up for reelection in '22 (like he did to Thune with Kristi Noem) if they don't join in @HawleyMO's sedition on Jan. 6, but the fact is, it's not clear whether Trump will be successful in ANY of those efforts & voting yes


2. to hedge off these threats will also create fissures & fractures for these incumbents among other elements of their party that could complicate their renominations. Indeed, what worries me the most about the potential for the country to slip into @anneapplebaum territory is

3. that what should be robust and intense push back from the party establishment against actually ending democracy- bc that's what Trump's request would do, if it was granted, is fairly muted. What we SHOULD be seeing from the mainstream of the party is threats to strip committee

4. assignments, chairs, privileges, even reelection funds, if anyone gets involved in this bullshit- in the House & the Senate, and the fact that you don't see it is more than a story of McConnell & McCarthy being afraid of Trump & his base. Its a story of receptivity, of the

5. level of receptivity the congressional and party leadership is dealing with both within the rank and file membership of the party and within its donor class, and THAT, my friends, is why you find me so concerned. That, and my decision to finally pull @anneapplebaum's book
TRUMP , CRYPTO

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To the person who thinks that they might be autistic. - a thread. /1

I imagine you have gone your entire life wondering why you are different, why you can't seem to understand things the way that others can and why everything just seems so hard. I'm proud of you for getting this far. /2

Part of you might be thinking:
"But if I was autistic, surely it would've been noticed when I was a kid? So maybe I'm making this up."
So many autistic people aren't diagnosed until they are adults, if diagnosed at all. You would not be the first and you won't be the last. /3

"My family and friends don't think that I could be autistic."
People's understandings of autism tend to be based off of the media, which doesn't show every possible presentation of autism, or based off of someone they know, and all autistic people present differently. /4

People's perceptions of autism can also be based off stereotypes, for example, "autistic people can't make eye contact, so you can't be autistic." While this is true for some, it isn't for all, so you can begin to see how one presentation of autism can't possibly fit everyone. /5
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@EpistemicHope
There's a particular kind of romantic partnership, with a certain sort of person, that I've wanted since I became a self-aware, directed agent at around age 15.

Empirically, this kind of relationship has been hard to achieve. It hasn't worked out yet, at least.

And this sometimes leaves me wondering if my standards are unreasonable.

In years past that desire was often very alive.

These days, I'm rarely directly or viscerally in contact with it.

I sometimes contemplate aiming for some other kind of romantic and/or sexual relationship instead. In part because I might be more effective if I...I don't know, got laid more? But that's not really the thing. More like, if I had someone around whom I could regularly relax.

But mostly, I don't pursue those alternative relationship-setups out of a sense of something like loyalty to myself + a vague sense of wrongness and/or sadness about it. It often feels like giving up or giving in.

[I might elaborate on the wrongness sometime.]
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The #worldwildlifeday2021 theme is Forests and Livelihoods: Sustaining People and Planet aligning with UN Sustainable Development Goals 1, 12, 13 and 15. So, what are the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) & how can children begin to learn about them & get involved ?

https://t.co/8ICvHxE9QL is easy & fun to follow for our smallest of people #EYFS. Early childhood is the perfect stage to introduce the core concepts of what it means to be a global citizen. For our reception & KS1 children please take a look at this fabulous free resource

https://t.co/tZx8UIS58Q Storytelling is a powerful communications tool and helps children remember lessons and virtues that they will use in everyday life. The idea is to simplify the lessons of the (SDGs) so young children can relate to – and better understand – the SDGs.

For older children here’s a board game that aims to help teach children around the world about the Sustainable Development Goals in a simple and child-friendly way

This is a lovely free book for children to enjoy flicking through themselves https://t.co/ScMbQCfpjl Elyx, the United Nations’ digital ambassador, uses various expressions and actions to help demonstrate the meaning of each Sustainable Development Goal.
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(THREAD) Pre-election Russia collusion may take down Trump. It's equally possible the Trumps' pre- and post-election collusion with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Israel will do it—a course of collusion also connected to the Kremlin. I explain here. I hope you'll read on and retweet.


1/ I must stress how unbelievably complex the "Grand Bargain" theory of the Trump-Russia case is—a different thing from saying it's not substantiated. It's substantiated in *almost every single particular*—it just *also* happens to be very confusing. Not byzantine—just confusing.

2/ The basics: Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the UAE all view Iran as their chief regional enemy. Iran is propped up by Russia. Therefore the Saudis, Israelis, and Emiratis all need a US government willing to find a way to get the Kremlin to *stop* supporting Iran in the Middle East.

3/ The best way to get Russia to stop supporting Iran—or reduce support—was/is to drop all sanctions on Russia over its 2014 annexation of Crimea, as that'd be worth *trillions* to the Kremlin over the next decade. Everyone knew that Clinton wouldn't do this—and that Trump would.

4/ Per the NYT, on August 3, 2016, Donald Trump Jr. met secretly at Trump Tower with a Saudi and Emirati emissary, George Nader, as well as an Israeli intelligence expert, Joel Zamel, with *significant* ties to both Israeli intelligence *and* Russian oligarchs allied with Putin.
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Here is a special thread introducing our series on “The Making of the Islamic World.” It offers 10 episodes about the transformation of Islamicate societies between the 7th and 17th centuries. You can find the series page here: https://t.co/7mL9eWmMmz


This is Chris Gratien posting. I created this series during Fall 2020 for my students as asynchronous material supported by readings and discussion. This is going to be a long thread, but it will be a great shortcut for those looking to make similar use of these materials.

There are two items worth pointing out: 1. This is an overview of the political, social, and cultural history of Islamicate societies. It does not deal with the origins of Islam or many theological questions. It does discuss Islam’s spread and the transformation of Islamic law.

2. This is the first part of a two-part sequence that takes the history of the Islamic world into the present. It emphasizes developments and themes that have particular relevance for later periods.

This is really a multivocal narrative of Islamic history. We feature over 20 scholars from almost as many institutions. Many of those who worked on it, myself included, study the early modern and modern era but have teaching obligations that take us further back in history.
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Most software founders, particularly in B2B, need to get radically better at sales. @Steli , who is the best person for explaining the scrappy stages in the beginning and then building out a team with scripts and processes, wrote a guide to:

For technical founders it is irrationally, obscenely hard to reverse years of programming (ba dum bum) that sales is a value-destroying activity. Sales is CLEARLY a value-creating activity, contingent on you have a value-creating product.

The world will not drop what they are doing to adopt your work. This is particularly true in B2B, where simply building a better mousetrap won't overcome the activation energy required to get people with additional non-mice problems to prioritize changing mousetraps today.

This is very non-obvious for founders because founders are not often people who *want* to be sold to. We often come from a background where trying out tools is a bit of a fun hobby. We like looking at all the options, making charts, and ripping out partially complete tests.

"This week I unsuccessfully trialed four software options for automating that thing that has been killing us. Our actual production process remains the same as last week. Don't worry; this was a great use of time." is not a thing you want to write in a progress report to manager.
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THREAD: Meditations on marriage metaphors in Ruth

The book of Ruth is, of course, a story about a beautiful marriage. But even before the courtship and the wedding and the important genealogy at the end, we find interesting language that is strikingly reminiscent of Genesis 2:24


That important verse reads:

'Therefore a man shall leave [יַֽעֲזָב] his father and his mother and hold fast [וְדָבַ֣ק] to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.'

The verb עזב can be quite strong in force. For example, Joseph leaves behind [וַיַּעֲזֹ֤ב] his garment as he flees from Pharaoh's wife's sexual advances. Countless times, Israel is depicted abandoning the LORD, for example in Judg 2:12 [וַיַּעַזְב֞וּ], and going after other gods.

Likewise, the verb דבק is rather striking. Lot is mortified of disaster overtaking him [תִּדְבָּקַ֥נִי] as he flees from Sodom. Israel is commanded in Deut 10:20 to cling fast [תִדְבָּ֔ק] to the LORD and serve him and swear by his name.

Together they illustrate how radical God designed marriage to be. Marriage is a real severing of family relations in order to form a new, permanent bond with another human being.

Something very similar to this takes places in Ruth's life.
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Jaya_Upadhyaya
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SRI VARAHA NARSIMHA, SIMHACHALAM, VIZAG (AP)
#bharatmandir

One of the 32 Narsimha Kshetram of Andhra. It has a unique form of Narsimha, appearing like a shivlingam

It is said that Narsimha’s fierce nature is soothed by worshipping him with Varaha, considered a peaceful deity


The shrine is believed to have been constructed by Prahlada. With time, it crumbled.
In Treta yuga, King Pururava was passing from here in his vimana. The vimana was attracted to this place by a mystic power.
When the place was unearthed, the deity was found.
@GunduHuDuGa


Pururava’s wife, Urvashi, had a dream that the deity should remain covered in sandalwood paste for the whole year except on Akshaya Tritiya.
This practice has continued till date.
The mukhya mandap here, has a pillar kappam stambham believed to possess curative powers.


Chandanotsava/ Chandan Yatra is the most important festival celebrated on Akshaya Tritiya. The sandalwood paste is removed from the moolavar deity and nijarupa darshan (original form of deity) for twelve hours of the day are done by devotees.
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