1/ While we wouldn’t do last year over again, #CHIdocumenters saw a lot happen in open meetings, local government and activism. So, before we put it behind us, here’s the story of 2020 through our eyes

2/ Back in January ‘20 #CHIdocumenters documented all meetings in person and had to navigate all that came with that...There's no one right way to run an open meeting but this setup wasn’t exactly "public-facing” / @rogueclown https://t.co/ae8xyorlYf
3/ #COVID19 was on the horizon––Dr. Allison Arwady called it at this @ChiPublicHealth meeting on February 19––but the average Chicagoan didn’t have an inkling of what would happen next / @britahunegs https://t.co/QEPVUgc2ZJ
4/ The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District @MWRDGC expected to celebrate every possible holiday this year in a similar fashion––how could it be otherwise? / @amelia_diehl https://t.co/goG3bUE0mU
5/ Independently, however, some public bodies were upping their government transparency game by proactively posting meeting materials and resources online (@ChicagoDPD) https://t.co/XYGi85lR3w
6/ To increase access to mental health services, Cook County planned to create video-call examining rooms where patients could access tele-health appointments / @RachelNaffziger https://t.co/XRnvRziCHo
7/ And the Regional Transportation Authority (@RTA_Chicago) was already trying to understand the long-term effects of a shift to more people working from home on @cta, @Metra & @PaceSuburbanBus / @morleydoc https://t.co/UOqynes2Uc
8/ Then concerns about #COVID19 started to grow… / @hcehogan https://t.co/ZMrFJsNgKr
9/ Things moved online... https://t.co/E46HJXh5Iv
10/ And government agencies had to adjust to a new normal. While the tech struggle was real… 💔 / @hd_documenter https://t.co/ETp5fBKIBl
11/ Remote public meetings brought some welcome innovations, like usernames that made it easier to ID the speaker + close-ups of slides / @MegannHorstead https://t.co/4Ku5RQe3yo
12/ And, as agencies got the hang of remote life, #CHIdocumenters covered more meetings than ever (600+). We documented… 🐤 📝
13/ Public bodies as they re-budgeted for a pandemic; South Shore Special Service Area (SSA 42) was quick to cancel its annual Summer Fest and redirect funds to support local businesses affected by the lockdown / @digitalSheila https://t.co/W8eJJ0QAZn
14/ @ChiPubSchools as it navigated the challenges of educating during a pandemic / @Rose26rv https://t.co/Qqsd5AOK9I
15/ City Council, @Chicago_Police and oversight agencies as they reckoned with the killing of #GeorgeFloyd, #BlackLivesMatter protests and police brutality / @newagehippie_ https://t.co/nbhB8C75m8
16/ Years of effort by middle schoolers “tired of being called cute and smart” come to fruition in the official renaming of Douglas Park to honor Frederick Douglass / @gremlina333 https://t.co/KGgiJR0kiE
17/ And 11 days and over 80 hours of city budget hearings, plus #PeoplesBudgetChicago conversations about what our communities need to be safe and thriving / @ahmad_sayles https://t.co/aYizx84SVd
18/ Here’s to each new day, healthy doses of skepticism and hope, and keeping our eye on the civic process. #CHIdocumenters

More from Government

🔷 Rev. Raphael Warnock has become the first Democrat to win a Georgia Senate race in 20 years

The politician spoke to voters via MSNBC this morning

https://t.co/T9oJN2fjmo


Warnock is a pastor at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta where civil rights leader Martin Luther King once preached.

He will become Georgia's first Black senator


This blue victory gives the Democrats the chance to regain control of the Senate for at least the first two years of the Biden presidency


"With Biden proposing to reverse President Donald Trump's tax cut, increase the minimum wage, and strengthen oversight on various industries, some might argue that his agenda is not particularly market-friendly," says Vasu Menon, investment strategy director at OCBC Bank
This is a good piece on fissures within the GOP but I think it mischaracterizes the Trump presidency as “populist” & repeats a story about how conservatives & the GOP expelled the far-right in the mid-1960s that is actually far more complicated. /1

I don’t think the sharp opposition between “hard-edge populism” & “conservative orthodoxy” holds. Many of the Trump administration’s achievements were boilerplate conservatism. Its own website trumpets things like “massive deregulation,” tax cuts, etc. /2

https://t.co/N97v85Bb79


The claim that Buckley and “key GOP politicians banded together to marginalize anti-Communist extremism and conspiracy-mongering” of the JBS has been widely repeated lately but the history is more complicated. /3


This tweet by @ThePlumLineGS citing a paper by @sam_rosenfeld and @daschloz on the "porous" boundary between conservatives, the GOP and the far-right is relevant in this context.


This is a separate point but I find it interesting that Gaetz, like Roy Moore did In his failed Senate campaign, disses McConnell. What are their actual policy differences? MM supported taking health care away from millions, a tax cut for the rich, conservative judges, etc. /5

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A brief analysis and comparison of the CSS for Twitter's PWA vs Twitter's legacy desktop website. The difference is dramatic and I'll touch on some reasons why.

Legacy site *downloads* ~630 KB CSS per theme and writing direction.

6,769 rules
9,252 selectors
16.7k declarations
3,370 unique declarations
44 media queries
36 unique colors
50 unique background colors
46 unique font sizes
39 unique z-indices

https://t.co/qyl4Bt1i5x


PWA *incrementally generates* ~30 KB CSS that handles all themes and writing directions.

735 rules
740 selectors
757 declarations
730 unique declarations
0 media queries
11 unique colors
32 unique background colors
15 unique font sizes
7 unique z-indices

https://t.co/w7oNG5KUkJ


The legacy site's CSS is what happens when hundreds of people directly write CSS over many years. Specificity wars, redundancy, a house of cards that can't be fixed. The result is extremely inefficient and error-prone styling that punishes users and developers.

The PWA's CSS is generated on-demand by a JS framework that manages styles and outputs "atomic CSS". The framework can enforce strict constraints and perform optimisations, which is why the CSS is so much smaller and safer. Style conflicts and unbounded CSS growth are avoided.