BC HISTORY
Saved by @CodyyyGardner

Arbitration was created to allow giant companies with equal bargaining power to settle disputes without incurring expensive court battles. So, when IBM and AT&T struck a deal, they'd agree that instead of going to court, they'd hire a neutral person to decide who was right.

1/

 But in the 21st Century, a string of Supreme Court rulings have paved the way for "forced arbitration" - when a company tells its customers or workers that as a condition of doing business, they must give up all the legal protections that come with the right to sue.

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Once you've been bound over to arbitration, a company can maim, cheat or murder you and your only recourse is to ask a corporate judge, on the company's payroll, to decide whether you are entitled to compensation.

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You will not be surprised to learn that arbitrators overwhelmingly find in favor of the companies that pay their invoices.

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We've experienced a quiet epidemic of binding arbitration. Your dentist or physiotherapist probably expects you to sign one. So does your kid's piano teacher. Your ISP. And, of course, your boss.

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Corporate America have been plumbing the depths of this accountability-ducking get-out-of-court-free card for years, sneaking arbitration into terms of service and other documents no one ever, ever (ever) reads.

6/
But, at last, we've found the bottom of this pit of despair. Massachusetts's highest court has ruled that a small-print notice that says, "By signing up you agree to the terms and conditions" does not constitute an agreement to arbitrate disputes.

https://t.co/5vV1OGd1TW

7/
The case concerns Christopher Kauders, who is blind and was illegally denied rides by Uber drivers. Uber's arbitration waiver forces riders to concede to the fiction that drivers are independent contractors, so Uber said Kauders needed to sue the drivers, not Uber.

8/
The court rejected this theory because Uber didn't force Kauders to go to the page with the Terms and Conditions (that no one ever, ever, ever reads) before clicking "I agree."

And yes, that is a VERY small win, but seriously, at least we've found the bottom.

9/
One of Lenny Bruce's most famous bits is "Eat, Sleep and Crap," which identifies the origin of civilization in the creation of agreements:

https://t.co/j9TRvgLAi3

10/
"Let's see. I tell you what we'll do. We'll have a vote. We'll sleep in Area A. Is that cool?"

"OK, good."

"We'll eat in Area B. Good?"

"Good."

"We'll throw a crap in area C. Good?"

11/
The idea that we negotiate the rules by which we conduct our affairs - rather than having them crammed down our throats - is the cornerstone of what it means to be in a free society.

12/
Democratically elected legislators create the rules by which we live: you can't sell poison as food, or maim people through negligence or malice.

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Binding arbitration yanks those rules out from under us: "By being stupid enough to click this link, you agree that I'm allowed to come over to your house, punch your grandmother, wear your underwear, make long distance calls and eat all the food in your fridge."

14/
The normalization of binding arbitration - the normalization of surrendering your legal rights in favor of a corporate judge who always sides with the house - is a grotesque, slow-motion train wreck for the very idea of a free and just society.

eof/

More from Cory Doctorow #BLM

Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
The Night of the Short Fingers saw many of the US's largest tech companies blocking Trump and trumpist platforms like Parler, provoking a storm of punditry about What It All Means for the tech companies to have taken this content moderation step.

1/


The best expert I know on the subject is @jilliancyork, my @eff colleague. She's published "an ongoing list" of "everything pundits are getting wrong about this current moment in content moderation."

You should read it.

Here's some highlights:

“Deplatforming Trump sets a precedent."

York: "The only 'precedent' set here is that this is indeed the first time a sitting US president has been deplatformed by a tech company."

3/

But political leaders around the world have already received this treatment: Lebanon, Burma, etc. Even the reach of the deplatforming is nothing new: last summer's US Iran ban saw blocks of everything, up to and including Etsy listings for "Persian dolls."

4/
HISTORY
Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
The Democrats are at least two parties. The progressive wing of the party (which is by no means unified) and the finance wing of the party, which is also the party leadership.

1/

During the leadership race, the progressive wing was represented by @SenSanders and @SenWarren; the former wants to minimize the role of markets in our lives, the latter wants to redeem markets by regulating them. It's a distinction with a difference, but I donated to both.

2/

Both wings of the party have prominent representatives in Congress; Sandersism are most visibly associated with @AOC (whom I donated to) and Warrenism is embodied by @RepKatiePorter (likewise), who was also one of Warren's law school proteges.

3/

Porter is a force of nature. She is infamous - and celebrated - for her brutal, no-holds-barred questioning of both corporate and administration witnesses, using a white-board to pin them down and eviscerating any attempts at bullshittery.

4/

This isn't just about getting facts into the record (though, she is SO GOOD at getting facts into the record!), it's also about effecting change, like when she single-handedly cornered the CDC's chief into guaranteeing universal, free covid
POLITICS
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Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
The US election news has largely overshadowed a seismic moment in global finance: Ant, a fintech company that spun out of Alibaba/Alipay, was scheduled to have the world's largest IPO, topping even Aramco, the Saudi sovereign wealth fund.

Then Chinese regulators canceled it.

1/


As @yvessmith writes in her excellent @nakedcapitalism breakdown, the consensus narrative on this is capricious Chinese regulators changed their minds and jerked the rug out from under Ali's billionaire owner Jack Ma.

The reality is a lot

To understand it, you need to understand the difference between the Chinese and American "money story." In the US, there is widespread, unquestioning faith in the fairytale that money predates the state and is separate from it.

3/

In this story, people come together to trade but are plagued by disparate goods: if I want to pay for your chickens with a cow, how do you make change? They spontaneously decide that something (gold?) is money and price their cows and chicks in it.

4/

Then, governments come along tax our gold away, and then to add insult to injury, governments abandon gold and insist that paper is as good as gold, print too much of it and crash the economy!

This probably sounds familiar to you, but it's just not true.

5/
ECONOMY , {GIG MONEY} , BANKING AND REGULATION
Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
2018 was almost the year we won the #RightToRepair.

Instead, 2018 turned out to be the year we lost #R2R: 20 bills defeated in 20 state houses, and it was mostly @apple's fault.

1/


Apple has a problem. As CEO Tim Cook warned his investors at the conclusion of his company's repair-killing lobbying spree, Apple's profits depend on people throwing away their devices, not fixing them.

By monopolizing repairs, Apple doesn't just get to gouge you on parts and service - the real action is in pronouncing your device DOA, beyond repair. Then you have to buy another one.

3/

Other companies lobbied hard against R2R: John Deere, GM, and other monopolists backed Apple's play. But Apple wrote the playbook, coming up with risible bullshit like claims that blocking independent repair is essential to protecting

Apple's anti-repair FUD got picked up and amplified by Big Car in 2020, when they spent millions fighting an automotive R2R ballot initiative in Massachusetts, claiming that letting independent mechanics at your car would lead to your actual MURDER.
BUSINESS
Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow
@doctorow
It's been eight years since @aaronsw took his own life. Aaron had been charged with 13 felonies under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (#CFAA) for violating the terms of service on the @JSTOR database of scholarly articles.

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Prosecutors Stephen Heymann and Carmen Ortiz didn't dispute that Aaron was allowed to access the articles he retrieved. Rather, they said that the WAY he accessed them (using a script instead of clicking on links) was a terms-of-service violation and hence a crime.

2/

In other words: any business could conjure a felony out of thin air by making you click through an unreadable garbage-novella of legalese proscribing the use of a service they granted you access to. Violate any of those terms and you face a prison sentence.

3/

This isn't law as we know it, it's Felony Contempt of Business Model, and the most alarming thing was that this interpretation of the CFAA wasn't completely ridiculous, given how badly drafted that law is.

4/

Ronald Reagan signed CFAA into law. Fed prosecutors had been seeking broad authority to punish "hacking" and had drawn up an absurdly broad definition of cybercrime that would give them latitude to go after anyone they didn't like.

5/
ALL

More from History

Pulp Librarian
Pulp Librarian
@PulpLibrarian
On 23 September 1984 the BBC broadcast the apocalypse: the story of nuclear war and its effects on the people of Sheffield. Filmed on a shoestring budget it still causes nightmares to this day.

This thread is not for the squeamish.

This the story of Threads...


In 1965 the BBC had filmed The War Game, a fictional docu-drama about a nuclear attack on Britain. However under pressure from the government the BBC withdrew it from screening. It was finally released in 1966 as a film in selected theatres.


For many years the withdrawal of The War Game had rankled many at the BBC. Surely it was a public broadcaster's duty to show the public what the reality of nuclear war would mean. Finally in 1982 they did so.


A Guide To Armageddon was a documentary for the BBC's peak-time science series Q.E.D. Produced by Mick Jackson it graphically depicted the effect of a one megaton explosion on London. It also explored how well people could survive such a blast if they were in a fallout shelter.


Jackson had carefully researched his subject and knew how under-prepared the UK was for nuclear war. The physical and psychological effects of atomic attack would catapult what was left of Britain back to a 14th century mode of living, a time when bubonic plague killed millions.
HISTORY
Clem Fandango
Clem Fandango
@ScotiaIndyref2
Mines had always had a large female element in their workforce; women were generally employed to carry coal to the surface. It was only in 1842 – with the Mines Regulation Act – that women and young children were banned from working below ground.


The following passage is an extract of a book that was published by Robert Bald, a mining engineer at Alloa, in 1812.

Robert Bald, A General View of the Coal Trade of Scotland, Chiefly that of the River Forth & Lothian, to which is Added an Inquiry into the Condition of the Women who Carry Coals under Ground in Scotland, Known by the Name of Bearers, Edinburgh: Oliphant, Waugh and Innes, 1812

In those collieries where this mode is in practice, the collier leaves his house for the pits about eleven o’clock at night, (attended by his sons, if he has any sufficiently old), when the rest of mankind are retiring to rest. Their first work is to prepare coals, by hewing

them down from the wall. In about three hours after, his wife (attended by her daughters, if she has any sufficiently grown) sets out for the pit, having previously wrapped her infant child in a blanket, and left it to the care of an old woman, who, for a small gratuity,
HISTORY
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Gareth Harney
Gareth Harney
@OptimoPrincipi
1) The Temple of the Divine Claudius was a vast temple complex on Rome's Caelian Hill, overlooking the valley that would later be occupied by the Colosseum. Though almost nothing now remains of the structure, its scale and grandeur once rivalled anything in the city.. #LostRome


2) The 'Claudium' was intended as a sacred complex to revere Claudius and the imperial cult. Construction began soon after the death and deification of the emperor in 54 AD, initiated by his widow Agrippina who was likely responsible for his supposed death by poisoning. #LostRome


3) The sprawling temple complex sat on a gigantic podium that spread across the Caelian Hill, measuring 180 x 200 metres; with towering retaining walls of travertine that raised the structure 20 metres above the valley below. #LostRome


4) The elevated sacred area was likely entered by steps facing the temple on the west side. The temple itself had a projecting hexastyle porch and was surrounded by gardens and a grand portico, probably the 'porticus Claudia' mentioned in Martial's 'On the Spectacles'. #LostRome


5) Statues of both Agrippina and Claudius’ ill-fated young son Britannicus, sculpted in sumptuous dark Egyptian greywacke, were discovered among the ruins on the Caelian Hill in 1651 – and had almost certainly been displayed in the temple precinct. #LostRome
HISTORY
Jess Nevins
Jess Nevins
@jessnevins
TIL:

- first Western detective stories translated & published in Japan in *1863*--that's pre-Meiji, even!

- first Chinese-written detective stories featuring Western-style detectives starred women as both detectives and criminals were published in 1907--author Lü Simian (!).

Quote: “This case is so complicated that even Sherlock Holmes would feel helpless if it fell into his hands. [Now] it is solved by a woman who returned from abroad for a brief
visit to her hometown. Who is to say that the wisdom of Chinese cannot compete with the Westerners?”

The lead female detective in these stories, Chu Yi, is a fan of Doyle's Holmes stories and asks herself "What would Sherlock Holmes do?" while crime-solving, but succeeds through her use of martial arts and more "Chinese" attributes--China, not the West, solves the crimes.

Author Lü Simian, btw, is this guy: https://t.co/swPvAxr87J . One of the "four greatest modern Chinese historians," also wrote a landmark work of literary theory, and helped cohere Chinese detective fiction with his stories. Bit of a badass.

Holmes was the dominant influence on Chinese detective fiction of the late-Qing & early Republic years, and the biggest star of Chinese detective fiction of those years, Cheng Xiaoqing's Huo Sang, was a spin on Holmes.
HISTORY
Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
As the Qanon prophecies fail and the cult-members struggle to resolve their cognitive dissonance, it's a good time to revisit the history of paranoid, conspiratorial political movements in American history - the "paranoid style" that has dominated since the Revolution.

1/


After all, the very first skirmishes of the US war of independence were based on a conspiracy theory: that the levy on tea was a prelude to a sellout of the colonists to transnational mercantalist interests. US politics have always been conspiratorial.

2/

I found @zacharykarabell's @politico history of the Know Nothing party especially useful, as it tells the story of what happens when surging, paranoid, fractious political movements

The American Party was a secret 19th century organization founded on a conspiracy theory: that Irish immigrants were secretly planning a takeover of the US on behalf of the Pope.

4/
HISTORY

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@HiteshAwasthi89
Stambheshwar Mahadev Temple, Kavi Kamboi, Bharuch, Gujarat

Stambheshwar Mahadev is a Hindu Temple dedicated to Bhagwan Shiva, located in Kavi Kamboi in Bharuch District District of Gujarat, India. The Temple is about 150 years old. 1/n


The Temple is also known as the Submerging temple. The Temple is flanked by the Arabian Sea on one side and the Bay of Cambay on the other side.

As per legend, Tarakasura troubled the common people, sages and devas a lot. 2/n


Hence, Bhagwan Kartikeya k!lled him, but later he felt guilty for killing a demon who was a great devotee of Shiva. He went to Prabhu Vishnu and told about his guilty. Bhagwan Vishnu advised him to install a Shiva Linga to get relief from the sin. 3/n


As advised, he installed the Shiva Linga in this place and prayed to Bhagwan Shiva to forgive his sin.
The temple is located in Kavi Kamboi between the shores of Bay of Cambay and the Arabian Sea. This Temple is very simple temple in terms of architecture. 4/n


Every day, during the high tide hours, the temple submerges, and when the tide level becomes normal, the temple reappears again. The Temple houses a 4 feet high Shiva lingam. The Lingam can be seen during low tide. The visit to the temple should be planned in such a way that..5/n
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Aditya Todmal
Aditya Todmal
@AdityaTodmal
A Thread on the Boss himself @Mitesh_Engr

Mitesh Sir's Positional Option Selling 101:

• How to find direction
• Which options to sell
• How to deploy capital
• Exit criteria
• What ROI he targets weekly
• What % risk he takes

Done with the help of @niki_poojary


How @Mitesh_Engr Sir finds the direction?

• Daily charts S/R
• 75 min charts S/R
• Intraday trend
• Always play directional
• Never trades in strategies


Which options to sell in weekly expiry according to @Mitesh_Engr?

• Weekly candle High/Low
• Sell 1% away options from those
• Exit when levels breached


Position Sizing by @Mitesh_Engr Sir.

How to deploy your capital?

• First sell 20%
• Pyramid the next day
• When to exit
• What to do when view goes wrong
• What to do with idle capital


Some important tweets of @Mitesh_Engr Sir

• What Data to look at
• ROI for safe players per month
• Max risk per day
• Gather knowledge and play directional
• Never play strategies
OPTIONS LEARNING , ALL , MPLEARNINGS
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dan spaceman
dan spaceman
@ohlaika
I'm gonna do my other star wars thread tomorrow, which will primarily be me yelling at a @RowanKaiser-shaped strawman for calling the First Order and The Resistance "cosplayers who the rest of the galaxy has to deal with"

the deal w/the New Republic, the First Order, and the Resistance is very weird and complex and I actually take issue with how Story Group frames the actual conflict.

pre-TFA stuff is presented as a "cold war" between the New Republic and the remnants of the Empire that form the First Order, which 100% makes sense.

But they frame the First Order's attack on the Hosnian system and the subsequent battle that takes place across TFA and TLJ as a full on war when it's very clearly a coup. A war implies at least equal standing, but the First Order completely wrecks shop and takes over the galaxy.

ok never mind I'm fucking doing this now.

The First Order fleet we see in TLJ is *not* the entire fleet of the First Order (I don't even think Starkiller Base was their main base of operations honestly, it couldn't have been considering they were operating out of Wild Space)
CULTURE
Shalini Singh Sengar
Shalini Singh Sengar
@Maverickmusafir
(An extract from Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, Soldiering with Dignity)

The man eventually destined to be free India's first Field Marshal was born on 3rd April 1914 at Amritsar. How did a Parsi couple settle for the holy city of the Sikhs? I once asked him and was told that in+


1899, his father recently qualified as a doctor and just married, could make no professional headway in Bombay, and was advised to try his luck at Lahore in the Punjab. With his young wife, he set off by train for Lahore. The long dusty and hot journey took five days and by the+


end of it, his young wife, who had never left the comforts and civilization of Bombay, was in hysterics and cried to go back. Poor Dr Manekshaw did all he could to comfort her, but as the train steamed into Amritsar, with her first sight of the Sikhs the young bride screamed her+

lungs out and refused to go any further. So they left the train at Amritsar, and there they stayed for forty-five years.

The Manekshaws had six children, four boys and two girls, and Sam was the fifth child. Sam had his schooling at Nainital's Sherwood College.+

After completing his schooling, he should have gone to England to pursue higher studies; this was the promise made to him by his father but, fortunately for the Indian Army, Dr Manekshaw felt that this particular son was far too young to be on his own in a foreign country, even+
HISTORY
Anshul Pandey
Anshul Pandey
@Anshulspiritual
RISHI ASHTAVAKRA(DEVAL)

Those who are well versed in our ancient scriptures must definitely have come across the name of Ashtavakra Muni. Who was he and what is the story behind his body getting crooked from all sides.

Muni Asit was the son of Pracheta Rishi.


He was childless and this caused a lot of worry to him. But an Akashvani assured him that he should go to Shivji to get all his
worries nullified.

So he along with his wife go to Shivji and after paying him obeisance start singing Shivji's praises.

He describes Shiv as the one who is beyond any other thing, whose glory has no words to describe. After this the couple stands with folded hands in front of Rudradev. The strotras sung in praise of Shiv possess magical qualities even today.

Shiv gets satisfied by them soon and is ready to grant a boon.

Shiva told him that, he very well knew what the Muni desired. He then gives him the "Sansaar Vijay' mantra and asks him to keep reciting it. The Isht devi would come at an appropriate time and fulfill his wish.

Asit Muni kept reciting this mantra for hundred years. The Devi appeared and granted him the boon of a son as a Shivansh. A son was born and was named as Deval. He grew upto be a great scholar well versed and a handsome young man. Asit Muni got him married to Ratnamalavati.
RELIGION