The following four scenarios will be discussed at the continued session of the 13th #OPEC & Non-OPEC meeting today:
1-Given the expected growth of demand by 5.9million bpd in 2021 and the expected growth of supply by non-OPEC countries by 1.1million bpd, as agreed in Dec... #OOTT

.... the 23 countries will increase production by 500 thousand bpd for the month of February - similar to January.

2- Given the expected growth of demand by 3.9 million bpd in 2021 , and the expected growth of supply by non-#OPEC countries by 800 (or 900) thousand bpd,...#OOTT

... as agreed in December, the production by the 23 countries will increase by 500 thousand for the month of February - similar to January. This scenario is practically the same as scenario number one, expect for lower forecasts for demand and supply. #OOTT

3- No increase (of 500 thousand bpd) for the months of February and March, and an increase of 500 thousand bpd for the moths of April, May and June each. In this scenario as well the ministers will hold monthly meetings to appraise the market and decide. #OOTT

4-The 500 thousand bpd increased in January to be decreased for the month of February. No increase for the month of March, and instead an increase of 500 thousand bpd for the months of April, May, June, and July. The probability for this scenario is considered to be low. #OOTT

Some ... personal news:

New York City must navigate the pandemic, and recovery efforts, while battling compound pre-existing conditions: racial injustice, inequality, and climate vulnerability. Local accountability journalism will make all the difference in the world to the shape we emerge in.

The team at @THECITYNY has an incredible record of impactful reporting, and I can't wait to join them in January. Some examples:

Labor reporting for the new world of work:

Campaigning reporting on solitary confinment in New York jails

Quick Thread on the Gut Microbiome

Hippocrates said: “All disease begins in the gut.”
While there is significant truth to this, in my personal view of health, it is a little more complex, but it is largely true.

The gut affects the rest of the body, being the gateway to what is absorbed, via the gut-brain axis (directly affects the brain), and due to the metabolism, absorption, detoxification and immune system (70% is in the gut) which takes place/resides in the gut, etc.

This is why it is so critical to take care of our gut health, because once it is negatively affected, it may never be the same again. What affects the gut microbiome? There are over 100,000 trillion microorganisms working together in the gut.

There are 10x more bacterial cells than human cells. Usually, we focus on the bacteria, although there are other species.

Currently, out gut microbiome is less diverse than historically, which can have a negative impact on our health as various species have distinct functions (metabolizing food, producing vitamins like B12 – which we have lost, among other functions).

“Those schools who try to do everything they would do in a face to face context in a remote context are going to come unstuck” Darren Northcott .....

“Worst workload is in schools that are reinventing the wheel rather than using resources like @OakNational “ ....

“Teachers are still being required to do triple and double marking, hand in daily and weekly lesson plans, and some schools are hanging onto flight paths and half term data drops AND now add remote learning to it”

“There is no evidence that one form of remote learning is better than another”

“There are schools with really effective remote learning that don’t use live streaming at all”

We're LIVE for the 2nd in a 3-part series around #EquityinEducation! We are grateful to have @DrDBL & @SuptEnfield joining us today for this important conversation. Follow along in this thread ⤵️ #BringPeopeTogether #TeVirtualEvents @EquitySupt1 @KafrissenKai

starts us off with a group activity to recognize our White Privilege. Kai acknowledges that she is showing up today in her own way, and leaning into these conversations as best she can. How are you showing up today? #BringPeopleTogether #TeVirtualEvents

reminds us why we are bringing people together for this work. 90% of school district leaders in the US are white. 90% also stated that the work of #DEI is important but only 20% believe that they are equipped with the skills and talent to lead this work! #Equity

- Hope is not a strategy! For marginalized populations hope is the only thing they have to hold on to, unless leaders like us pick up this work and accelerate it. #BringPeopleTogether #DEI #Equity #EquityInEducation

tells us that when she moved to Highline public schools (diverse population) she was criticized for moving too quickly in this work. There is a sense of urgency because we are so behind and we are playing catch up! #EquityInEducation #DEI

Instead of believing that Stacey Abrams is super-human, believe that it can happen everywhere if we all do the work.

I keep seeing people saying “both” and...that’s not the answer, people. Stacey Abrams deserves all the adulation we can give her but she is very much a human.

There is a word we use for when we don’t acknowledge someone as a human. It’s dehumanizing.

Don’t do it.

As someone who gets told I’m super-strong and a badass and blah blah blah... that shit is not a compliment, it’s DEPRESSING as hell. It’s a way of ignoring my needs and limitations.

Anyway, did you know that Stacey Abrams has a thriller coming out? Go buy it.

The least we can do is help her pay off her student loans and jumpstart a retirement

1/ More thoughts on impasse over organizing Senate/committees. McConnell demands Democrats commit that they won't "go nuclear" to ban legislative filibusters. Schumer says no. The organizing resolution can be filibustered, hence McC's potential leverage. So what's going on here?

2/ Democrats are highly unlikely to make such a commitment, even if McC sees the ploy as a clever way to split the Democrats. Even if Dems *did* agree, both parties know it's not a credible commitment. The last time the party leaders shook hands on such an agreement (2011)...

3/ the agreement didn't stick. McConnell and the GOP's concerted effort to block judicial and executive nominees encouraged Reid and Democrats to nuke most nomination filibusters in 2013-- in a Congress that was covered by the 2011 agreement. Granted, that agreement was informal

4/ in the sense that it wasn't written into either the organizing resolution or one of the "standing orders" Senate agreed to in 2011. (Here, I highly recommend @ProfStevenSmith The Senate Syndrome. If we weren't in a pandemic, I'd pull out my hard copy to pinpoint the chapters!)

5/ Of course, even if agreement had been formalized beyond the 🤝, that wouldn't have stopped the Dems in 2011 (minor nuke of the cloture rule) or 2013 (major 💣of cloture rule) or the GOP in 2017-- once the party felt it could shoulder the political costs of bending the rules.

A mini history re: AZ Senate Seat Politics:
McCain was an AZ Senator for 31 yrs over 5 terms.
In 2015 he was primary challenged by Dr. Kelli Ward, an AZ State Senator and tea party fav.
In a surprisingly brutal primary, where McCain poured HUGE 💰 into, he won. (Did he?🤔)

@BaddCompani When DT as a candidate said Russia, if you got the emails. I smelled the bs & knew they were in on it together. At this point, Putin & DT had been bro jockeying each other in the media for the last 6 months. Putin, who is a talented politician had the understanding that his (1)

candidate needed a prop. Putin knew he couldn’t over compliment or people would smell through it. At this point Trump had no credibility as a candidate from world leaders! More so, his stock was falling fast. This is during the winter of 2015. In the beginning of DT’s campaign (2

So, he called him “colorful” Which was just enough to give DT a start on his worldwide credibility problem that he needed to establish. While acting as the interaction was purely genuine. These numerous interactions in the last couple of months of 2015 & first 6 mos. of 2016. (3)

Additionally, why was DT/fam/associates in Russia so much during the years of 2013 & 2014. Smells like a lot more than just building skyscrapers in Moscow. DT’s little ego was hurt bc he felt like a lot of Americans did not give him the respect that he felt he deserved. Typical(4

of a small man. DT may be large in stature but he is small in character. That has always been his downfall & he knew it yet he has made the same mistakes repeatedly and failed numerous times because of it throughout his life. Do you remember the faces he would make during his (5)

The Pandemic has got me thinking. On TV, people of the future are always very comfortable with data. They collect it. They analyze it. They adjust their strategies in real time. Not in days or hours or minutes but often literally in SECONDS.🧵👇

They run simulations of different outcomes. The simulations aren't always right but they seem to put them in the ballpark of what's reasonable. People take the simulations and data seriously. They factor them into their planning.

Even when the future government is evil, it's still smart. Even when the future government is rigid and uncreative in how it responds to stuff, it's responses are still logically related to the assumptions it has made, the data it has collected and the analyses it has performed.

Unfortunately, our civilization is NOT THAT. We collect data but usually haphazardly and in ways that make it hard to draw any conclusions. It often takes a long time for us to make sense of data. Politicians often throw out the numbers completely.

We don't seem to care what the probability of various outcomes are. We don't seem to use probabilities when making decisions. Perhaps, you're thinking about the election predictions and about how they were close but not quite right.

under article 3, not 2...so the SCOTUS will be forced to listen.....

He now has the DNI report.

Barr stepped down and can now be a witness.....he did his job.

Durham is special counsel and can prosecute, in any state....

Conspiracy theories attempt to explain events as the secretive plots of powerful people. While conspiracy theories are not typically supported by evidence,
this doesn’t stop them from blossoming. Conspiracy theories damage society in a number of ways. /1 (THREAD) #TTP

1/ How many times have u been told that ‘Imposter syndrome’ is an internal problem? That it’s your responsibility to make it go away from your mind. That it’s entirely a figment of your own imagination. Well I don’t think so, but the journey to this conclusion has been painful 🧵

2/ Let’s start with the definition of Imposter syndrome: it’s basically those feelings of inadequacy & doubt in your abilities to do the things that you’ve proved successful in doing by virtue of your achievements & qualifications. This in turn affects your confidence to do them.

3/We’re told women, particularly those from minoritised backgrounds, have this more intensely though it can affect anyone. I’ve certainly felt it throughout my life intensifying at times of stress and overload. But is it entirely internally triggered? Well, this is the narrative.

4/ You go to courses, you read articles, you speak to mentors and what they usually tell you is that it’s all in your mind. Perhaps triggered by your social upbringing & cultural background. So you must work on it. But I’ve realised recently that it’s not just that.

5/ Some people in your surroundings trigger this, to be fair to them perhaps unconsciously. They may have in their minds a stereotype of you that is inadequate & incapable of achieving what you’ve achieved in reality. So they do or say things that trigger the feeling in you..

IMHO, this article — https://t.co/wLiWDOZrvm — is an important corrective to fatalism about the new strain. As in, "welp, there are probably already at least a handful of cases of the new strain already here, so no matter what we do now, it's gonna spread." Not necessarily so.

"10 to 20 percent of infected people may be responsible for...80 to 90 percent of transmission."

"An early run of bad [or good!] luck...can produce dramatically different outcomes."

New Zealand had 277 separate introductions; only 19% of them led to more than 1 additional case.

That's all referring to the original COVID strain, but I haven't read anything suggesting that the same pattern doesn't apply to the new variant. Not sure if we know yet, but it's at least possible a lot of people don't spread it (while the few that do, spread it *A LOT* a lot).

Here's what we know, or think we know:

* The new variant is here, with probably at least a handful of undetected cases.

* The new variant is so wildly contagious that, once it gains a foothold, cases WILL spike.

* Cases stopped rising steeply around Nov. 10 (by onset day).

It seems like 1 of 2 things is true:

1) New variant arrived in October or earlier, and helped cause our November spike. We then reined it in, without even realizing it was here.

2) New-variant community spread is low-level thus far, at least thru ~Xmas. No superspreaders yet.

Some thoughts: The great paradox of 1/6 is that so much of the planning happened out in the open (both in the immediate run-up and over the past 4+ years), which actually made it less effective. There were too many disparate and undisciplined groups, effectively tourists.

This part of Trumpism will continue. To the extent the Trump family is able to operate in the open, they will become the Grateful Dead of right-wing politics, which Trump rallies already embody, and followers will go on tour, chanting "Lock Her Up" for the coming decades.

The key question is whether the Far Right will break from this. Some indications show that Trump's efforts at self-preservation by weak denunciation will fuel a break and also further a pervasive "stabbed-in-the-back" narrative that the Far Right uses everywhere.

What made 1/6 more effective was the obvious underpreparation by the Capitol police, in coordination with DOJ and DOD. Some indiv officers assented but some did their job a little too effectively--incl. by shooting the woman in the bldg as much as not shooting entrants at first.

It's clear that some people entered the Capitol with the intent to kidnap/lynch specific members of Congress (you can figure out who), and some of those people basically fantasized about doing that for the likes while live-streaming (insert analogy to Zetas/ISIS/whatevs).

I’ve been delighted to see the sudden surge in support for mandatory hotel quarantine (MHQ) in Ireland, with the aim of achieving zero covid. While it is, on balance, the best option, I fear that some commentators have underestimated the challenges. Here are some examples....

...1) MHQ is frequently framed as a temporising measure, with the aim of establishing quarantine-free travel bubbles with other zero covid regions. Not many countries have achieved zero community transmission. But in those that have, travel bubbles have been vanishingly rare...

...2) MHQ is super strict. The point of it is that it would allow Ireland to open up society again. If you miss cases in that context, you let infectious people into a country where socialising is the norm. The result is explosive outbreaks. In countries that have MHQ, you...

....don’t get exemptions except in the rarest cases. Not for funerals or sick relatives or graduations. Exemptions in most MHQ countries allow you out for a few hours at most on only the most compassionate grounds. If it’s too loose, it just doesn’t work.....

3) You still get occasional outbreaks and cases. The aim is for zero community transmission, not zero cases. If a covid+ve person in MHQ sneezes on a surface enroute to their room for example, you could get fomite transmission to a staff member. Quarantine hotels in themselves...