BC GOVERNMENT
Saved by @jacobhtml

If you're curious what Trump's defense will look like, all you have to do is turn on Fox News. My latest at @mmfa

 The tl;dr is that for years right-wing media have been excusing Trump's violent rhetoric by going, "Yes, but THE DEMOCRATS..." and then bending themselves into knots to pretend that Dems were calling for violence when they very, very clearly weren't.
And in fact, this predates Trump.

In 2008, Obama was talking about not backing down in the face of an ugly campaign. He said "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun."

https://t.co/i5YaQJsKop
That quote was from the movie The Untouchables. And there's no way anybody reading that quote in good faith could conclude that he was talking about actual guns and knives. But it became a big talking point on the right.

https://t.co/vBb0gbaQkz
In 2018, Obama-era Attorney General Eric Holder was speaking to a group of Georgia Democrats about GOP voter suppression. He riffed on Michelle Obama's "When they go low, we go high" line from the 2016 DNC.
"Michelle always says, ‘When they go low, we go high.’ No. No. When they go low, we kick them. That’s what this new Democratic Party is about. We’re proud as hell to be Democrats. We’re willing to fight for the ideals of the Democratic Party," he said.
So as not to be misunderstood, Holder even said, “Now, when I say, you know, ‘we kick ‘em,’ I don’t mean we do anything inappropriate. We don’t do anything illegal."
But it didn't matter. It was obvious that he wasn't talking about actually kicking anyone. Fox News just ran with it. They edited out the context where he even explains that he was speaking figuratively. Then they pretended he was being extremely literal.

Seriously, watch this.
Trump called into Fox & Friends that day. He called Holder's comment "disgusting" and "dangerous." Then he went on to talk about how nice and peaceful his rallies were (seriously), and then brought up a conspiracy theory about George Soros paying protesters.
When I wrote about it at the time, I highlighted just how quickly the Holder story spread throughout right-wing media, and how much they all pretended that he was speaking literally. https://t.co/pzck9v1ncm
If they thought Holder was being literal when he said "No, when they go low, we kick them," did they think that Michelle Obama meant "when they literally duck down on the floor, we take flight?" No, of course not. They just feign ignorance.
Fox covered that story for about a week. Every once in a while, someone on the right will include Holder saying that in one of their "oooOoOoO, look at Democrats advocating for violence!" compilations, even though that's just flat-out false.
Another example of people on the right purposely taking words out of context to pretend that Democrats advocate violence: In January 2017, Tim Kaine talked about opposing the administration by fighting in Congress, in the courts, in the streets, online, and at the ballot box.
Naturally, right-wing outlets decided to run with that quote, making sure to highlight him saying "in the streets," so as to make it sound like he was talking about actual physical violence rather than, you know, marches. https://t.co/59mCecNKXr
In 2018, there was this whole thing about "civility." A Virginia restaurant owner asked Sarah Sanders to leave because of her work in the Trump administration, and it set off a whole controversy.
That story made the rounds on right-wing and mainstream media, which unfortunately resulted in the restaurant owner becoming the target of a pro-Trump mob that would throw actual poop at her restaurant https://t.co/hgB8AHo4mb
(If you're unfamiliar with that story, here it is. https://t.co/y2P38s8Imr )
Days later, Maxine Waters was speaking to a group of people and basically encouraged them to do what that restaurant owner did should they see members of the Trump administration in public, pointing to the implemented family separation policy.
(What the restaurant owner did, what Waters encouraged, etc., that's something I think reasonable people can disagree on. However, it's clear that Waters wasn't calling for violence, and it's important to keep that separate. Still, that's a major right-wing example used.)
Dan Bongino went on Fox to clutch his pearls. https://t.co/eOYAyifvIU
Now, that's not at all to say that there isn't politically-motivated violence from people on the left. Hell, in 2017, a guy whose FB was filled with anti-Trump/anti-GOP content shot 5 people at a GOP baseball practice!

https://t.co/J0SKny65Xw
After that shooting, right-wing media jumped in to blame everyone from Snoop Dogg to Shakespeare for it. https://t.co/V33bnZWFeL
Another example from 2017 that right-wing media tried to turn into an example of "Democrats call for violence" was the mangling of Loretta Lynch urging people to keep pushing forward even if times were tough. https://t.co/7oHUP7YajS
Going into the 2018 midterms, the GOP and right-wing media coalesced around a message of "Jobs Not Mobs." The idea was that Democrats were violent while the GOP would never do such a thing. https://t.co/QN0jVexW1w
Fox even went so far as to pretend that a Proud Boys attack on protesters was "the mob" of the left attacking Republicans. Just the total polar opposite of reality. https://t.co/P9ir9lEUIs
The entire strategy going into those midterms was basically to try to scare their viewers into thinking that Democrats were trying to literally kill them. As @MattGertz wrote at the time: https://t.co/OHVVd2miGI
https://t.co/eKwsKWrre3
https://t.co/5mrqgvZVnU
That night, Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes volunteered the group to be "foot soldiers" for the Republican Party https://t.co/Pf94Bfy98W
It should also be noted that the "Jobs Not Mobs" video that started that whole slogan in October 2018 originated on the ultra-violent r/The_Donald reddit page (which has since moved to its own site) https://t.co/8n90WkphEN
But the whole thing is all part of a larger strategy of accusing Democrats of inciting violence by pointing to statements and actions that absolutely do not incite violence.
Right-wing blogger and crusades-enthusiast Ryan Saavedra tried to pretend that Biden called for a "physical revolution" in 2019 (he didn't; he called for finding common ground, explicitly saying that he wasn't calling for a revolution) https://t.co/QN35wlumPx
We all understand that simply using the word "fight" or "beat" or whatever... that's not necessarily a call for violence.

Anyone who says that "Well, Politician X said we have to fight for this bill clearly means physical violence!" is not a serious person.
And throughout Trump's entire time in office, that's been a common theme: pretending that the issue people have with something Trump said being a specific forbidden word being used rather than what he said in using it.
When Trump called a handful of places "shithole countries," the right-wing response was "Look, here's an example of someone else saying the word 'shit!'" which is very obviously not the problem people had with it. Same goes with the Access Hollywood tape.
It was good to see @RepCicilline explicitly lay this out during the first day of the trial. https://t.co/HUdWqtRyaj
In May 2020, ABC News was able to find 54 cases of people invoking Trump in connection to violence/treats/assaults https://t.co/UEeL0GUY6K
Last month, Vox catalogued all the times Trump encouraged political violence. https://t.co/pHP7JvXbDj
The only surprise about January 6 was that it took this long for his violent mob of supporters to try to overthrow the government.
He's been doing this the whole time, and he's been praised for it. Here's Fox & Friends excitedly tweeting about Trump's "strong message" in 2016 https://t.co/QWda6AGCWm
I try to cover that and more in my piece published today. It's what you're likely to hear in Trump's defense: https://t.co/HUdWqtRyaj

More from Parker Molloy

Parker Molloy
Parker Molloy
@ParkerMolloy
There are a number of reasons bills like these are wrongheaded. One is that it tries to implement the same kind of one-size-fits-all solution that opponents of trans inclusion claim to oppose.

But let’s get nuanced for a minute...


Do trans women and girls have an advantage in sports over other women and girls?

I’m here to provide a very unsatisfying answer: It depends.

What sport are we talking about?

How old are people competing in it?

What sort of hormone treatment has the person in question had and for how long?

Those are all factors that play into the fairness question.

Trying to implement broad policies in the name of ensuring fairness can actually have the opposite of the intended effect.

Take the case of Mack Beggs.

A few years back, Beggs was a high school student in Texas. He was a wrestler, and wanted to do it at the college level.

Beggs is a trans man, meaning his birth certificate said female on it. Like many trans guys, he takes testosterone as part of his medical transition.

He wanted to wrestle. Specifically, he wanted a spot on his school’s boys team.

He wasn’t allowed.
GOVERNMENT
Parker Molloy
Parker Molloy
@ParkerMolloy
Not sure who needs to hear this, but if you're continuing to baselessly argue that there was widespread fraud and/or that the election was somehow "stolen" from Trump, you're encouraging people to attack again.

It's time to stop lying to your audiences, to your constituents.

Fox News host Mark Levin on January 3:

"Our Declaration of Independence and Constitution are being destroyed by the Democrat Party and the media. ... We're standing at the precipice and we're looking into the abyss."

Seriously, watch this.
NEWS
Advertisement
Parker Molloy
Parker Molloy
@ParkerMolloy
This is what happens when the Trump cultists refuse to acknowledge anything outside their extremely insular bubble: they can’t grasp that the majority of the country thinks he sucks and voted him out.


Not once in 4 years of Gallup’s 3-day tracking of Trump’s approval rating was it ever higher than 49%.

He was the least popular incumbent since Carter to run for re-election. It’s not shocking that he got his ass kicked in the election. https://t.co/7BSCQR2vI2


But if you do nothing other than consume conservative media, you’d be under the false impression that he’s popular, that his ideas are popular, and that the people who oppose him are a small group of haters.

In Gallup’s last update before the election, Trump had a -6 net approval rating. The last time it was a net positive was in May when it was +1.


And here’s how you get numbers like that: you do absolutely nothing to try to win over people who aren’t already part of your base. Look at those numbers among independents.
GOVERNMENT
Parker Molloy
Parker Molloy
@ParkerMolloy
"Communist Blogger" is my favorite Neutral Milk Hotel song


Anyway, here are some of the "communist" blog posts about the Qongresswoman from Georgia (thread)

In 2018, she agreed with someone who said that 9/11 was an inside job and argued that the school shooting in Parkland, FL was a false flag.

And then there's another time she said that the Parkland shooting was fake

She claimed that there was "never any evidence" that a plane was flown into the Pentagon on 9/11
SOCIETY
Parker Molloy
Parker Molloy
@ParkerMolloy
This is what pisses me off about the constant bad faith victimhood crap people on the right do:

1. They wildly misrepresent something innocuous (no, Pelosi did not “ban” anything).

2. They come up with a “gotcha” example of hypocrisy... that relies on their misrepresentation.


This same exact nonsense gets trotted out constantly. “Oh, so now we’re not allowed to call ourselves husbands or mothers or uncles or aunts or men or women?! Outrage!” But no one at all is doing that, nor have they ever been doing that.

Yet the right loses its shit over this every few months. A lot of the time it’ll be something like... a lawmaker will introduce a bill that would tweak applications for marriage licenses to say “spouse 1” and “spouse 2” instead of just “husband/wife” because the status quo ...

... will have been creating actual legal issues for gay couples who then have to put something false on legal documents designating one of them as “wife.”

It’ll be something like that, just meant to fix an issue that has no material impact on 99% of people.

And the right, like clockwork, will lose their minds over it as though anyone is trying to “ban” the concept of someone being a husband or a wife or a man or a woman or whatever.

From a few years back, here’s Bill O’Reilly doing that
SOCIETY

More from Government

HStvNews
HStvNews
@HStvNews
#Justin A day before the @MyMDC_T EOC, the party Treasurer General says he is unable to fund travel costs for delegates to congress because the money was allegedly stolen. We share contents of the letter from #ChiefNdlovu


“My office has been inundated with calls from concerned EOC delegates who by now should have received their Provincial transport allocation.
It has come to my attention that some of our members may not be able to travel to the EOC due to lack of funding.”


Equally I have received allegations that the Treasury is refusing to make payments for EOC, nothing could be further from the truth. I would like to take this opportunity as your Deputy Treasurer to inform you that as treasury we are not able to pay due to the fact that...


that funds were withdrawn from the party account on the 18th December 2020, we are still pursuing and trying to get some Standing Committee members who were involved in the unapproved transfer to return the money to the Party.
I was left a bit shocked to learn that the SG expects


Treasury to release money when he is the one who transferred all the money out of the account without my explicit approval. Perhaps the SG must inform members where the money is. I certainly do not have any knowledge of who he sent the money to or what has happened to those funds
GOVERNMENT
Cleveland Documenters
Cleveland Documenters
@cledocumenters
Last week, @CleCityCouncil started reviewing Mayor Frank Jackson’s proposed city budget for 2021. There was robust discussion, and Documenters were there to cover it. Here’s a thread of what we learned last week about the #CLEBudget

First, it helps to know where we are in the budget process. From today through Feb. 24, the council will meet about the General Fund budget. The council will then agree on a budget with their changes (if any); 15 days after doing so, they can vote to make the budget official.


In other words, there’s still time to use your voice! The #refundcleveland tool can help. Create the #CLEBudget you want and send it to your council member. Click “Change the Budget” on the homepage and follow the on-screen instructions from there.

Want to know the budget basics? Our #CLEBudget primer details the timeline, different types of budgets and the funds involved, and defines budget-related terms. It can be a helpful guide during City Council’s discussions.

And don’t forget: all these meetings are livestreamed on City Council’s YouTube channel. They’re slated to start at 9 a.m. every business day from today through the 24th. You can also follow along with #CLEDocumenters live-tweet threads and
GOVERNMENT
Advertisement
Warren C.\U0001f1fa\U0001f1f8 45th POTUS = G.O.A.T. \U0001f1fa\U0001f1f8 \u271d\ufe0f
Warren C.🇺🇸 45th POTUS...
@808TeslaY
💥💥💥 Situation Update, Jan. 5, 2021 – Congress will betray; patriots will need to RESCUE the President

Barring some miracle, it looks like tomorrow, the US Congress and VP Mike Pence will betray America and shut down any objections to the Biden slate of electors from swing
GOVERNMENT
BLMChicago
BLMChicago
@BLMChi
A lot is happening in Chicago. Mayor Lori Lightfoot Emanuel gave over 65% of CARES Act money to CPD. Today, the Office of Inspector General released their report on the uprisings where it is revealed how Lori is directly responsible for the brutality.

Page 55 documents how during the May 30th protests, CPD refused a person their seizure medication, watched them collapse and threatened another detainee with violence if they moved, presumably to assist the person having a seizure. Footage then records a cop threatening rape.


When Lori demanded the bridges be raised, it forced CDOT to call off duty employees. This was a move they were surprised to receive since it is rarely done. The raising of bridges was considered during the NATO protests in 2010 and was ultimately rejected as ‘ineffective’.


The raising of the bridges created the conditions where police battered people including lifting one person by his neck and throwing him to the ground before dragging him through horse manure.


In the same footage as the person having a seizure, CPD responds to another officer saying they should “shoot the occupants of the vehicle in the head”.
GOVERNMENT
Helen Pluckrose
Helen Pluckrose
@HPluckrose
Here is the full document. I am going to go through it now.

Yep. This is also a point strongly made in @andrewdoyle_com's new book on Free Speech which I am halfway through and am pretty sure I will be recommending as a primer for the alarming number of people who seem confused about what free speech is & why it is good.


Well, good! Conservatives have not been great at this historically so I must give credit where it is due. I really wish this were a left-wing government taking this progressive stance.

(Areo has a piece forthcoming on why supporting FoS is inherently progressive, btw)


Yes, sadly this is true. I currently have half a dozen cases where people are being penalised for trying to express unorthodox views in the academy.


However, I should also say that one case in which I helped a student prepare for an ethical review when she had already been made aware her views were problematic (she wanted to treat people as individuals) was a resounding success & she passed it. So there is still hope.
GOVERNMENT

You May Also Like

ArmaniTalks \U0001f399\U0001f525
ArmaniTalks 🎙🔥...
@ArmaniTalks
Your Most PRECIOUS Currencies:

-Energy

-Time

-Attention

-Trust

-Love

-Loyalty

-Respect

Only give these currencies to high value people. Never spend these currencies on low value shitheads eg: trolls, weasels, snakes, naysayers etc.

'Wait, I thought money was the most important currency?'

Nah.

Once you adopt abundance mentality, you realize their is no shortage of money.

Making the dollars your most important currency will have you leading an empty life.

Time to flip your perspective.

👇

▪Energy

When you strip yourself to the core, you are an emotional creature.

Emotions are your internal worlds energy.

Harnessing that energy is crucial for leveraging yourself to obtain whatever you want.

You have a finite amount everyday, so spend it wisely.

▪Time

A second that is lost will never be returned.

You start valuing the hell out of this currency the more you mature.

As the years start adding up, you realize time is precious.

You must always have a scarcity mindset towards time.

Once you do so, you will not be lazy.

▪Attention

You can be here, but not present.

Attention is completely mental.

Giving someone your attention means you are clearing up mental bandwidth to make room for them.

Only give your attention to people who help you grow.

For the negative ones?

Ignore their existence
LIFE
ArmaniTalks \U0001f399\U0001f525
ArmaniTalks 🎙🔥...
@ArmaniTalks
A relationship begins to get stiff when excessive patterns begin to form.

Too many patterns leads to a boring, predictable, logical lifestyle.

Get the emotions involved.

Do something spontaneous out of the blue moon & flip the script.

'What's wrong with the patterns?'

Nothing is wrong with patterns.

However, there is a problem when all you have are patterns.

It's boring.

'Can you explain why?'

Sure 👇

The thing with relationships is that it's meant to be an emotional experience.

It's very difficult to logically explain love, right?

'Right.'

Well this is where you want to steer the ship the right way.

1. Too emotional is bad.

2. Too logical is bad.

Let me break it down.

1. Too emotional

If a relationship is completely ruled by emotions, then it's too volatile.

You will never reach productivity if you are aimlessly only following each others emotions.

This lifestyle tarnishes any structure for the couple.

'So why do people do it?'

Because it's fun.

You may ruled by this stage in the honeymoon phase.

Normal.

You'll be so spontaneous that it almost becomes a lifestyle.

But it's hard to level up your life when you're too spontaneous.

Avoid.
LIFE
Advertisement
Roger Grosse
Roger Grosse
@RogerGrosse
Important paper from Google on large batch optimization. They do impressively careful experiments measuring # iterations needed to achieve target validation error at various batch sizes. The main "surprise" is the lack of surprises. [thread]

https://t.co/7QIx5CFdfJ


The paper is a good example of lots of elements of good experimental design. They validate their metric by showing lots of variants give consistent results. They tune hyperparamters separately for each condition, check that optimum isn't at the endpoints, and measure sensitivity.

They have separate experiments where the hold fixed # iterations and # epochs, which (as they explain) measure very different things. They avoid confounds, such as batch norm's artificial dependence between batch size and regularization strength.

When the experiments are done carefully enough, the results are remarkably consistent between different datasets and architectures. Qualitatively, MNIST behaves just like ImageNet.

Importantly, they don't find any evidence for a "sharp/flat optima" effect whereby better optimization leads to worse final results. They have a good discussion of experimental artifacts/confounds in past papers where such effects were reported.
MACHINE LEARNING
Vibhu Vashisth
Vibhu Vashisth
@VIBHU_Tweet
MAHARAANI TARARANI: THE QUEEN OF MARATHAS

Rani Tarabai was the brave daughter-in-law of Chhatrapati Shivaji and one of the greatest medieval Monarchs India ever had.
She was born in 1675 to one of the bravest commander-in-chiefs of Shivaji's Army named Hambir Rao Mohite.


Tarabai was just 8yrs old when she was married to Shivaji's younger son, Rajaram. Mughals and Marathas were constantly at war with each other. Shivaji was crowned the ruler of the Independent Maratha Swarajya in 1674 which was established by him.


However,the great leader died in 1680&the Maratha Samrajya went into a complete&total chaos.Marathas saw some very tough times ahead. In 1689,when Raigad Fort fell to the Mughal Army of over 15000,Shivaji's first wife Saibai and his elder son Sambhaji were captured&put to death.


Sambhaji's wife and son Shahu were taken prisoners to the Mughal court. During the same battle, Shivaji's second son Rajaram(Tarabai's husband) , who was the heir to the throne now, managed to escape using a disguise. He made his way to the Gingee Fort in Tamil Nadu.


Mughal General Zulfikar Khan, however, followed them to Gingee laying siege to the Gingee Fort. From 1690-1698,This was the longest siege by a Mughal Army of any Fort which stands testimony to the military and diplomatic credentials of Rani Tarabai.
ALL
Nikita Poojary
Nikita Poojary
@niki_poojary
One of the most successful stock trader with special focus on cash stocks and who has a very creative mind to look out for opportunities in dark times

Covering one of the most unique set ups: Extended moves & Reversal plays

Time for a 🧵 to learn the above from @iManasArora

What qualifies for an extended move?

30-40% move in just 5-6 days is one example of extended move

How Manas used this info to book


Post that the plight of the


Example 2: Booking profits when the stock is extended from 10WMA

10WMA =


Another hack to identify extended move in a stock:

Too many green days!

Read
SCREENERS , A SCREENER