Short thread on communication, teaching and selling ideas:

When I finished school I went to study in Israel in a "Yeshiva" - these are like HE academies where you just study Jew stuff: philosophy, bible, history, law. And, lots of talmud. 1/

The Talmud is really hard at the best of times. It's very confusing, varies in style from page to page, the content itself is very demanding and it's in a weird Aramaic-Hebrew hybrid. 2/
Everyone in the Yeshiva studied the same tractate (like a book of the talmud) but there were lots of different classes, with each rabbi having a very different style and approach. 3/
One rabbi took a highly abstract and conceptual approach. He used very complicated ideas and words and did a lot of monologuing. Everybody used to rave about how amazing his classes were. So, one day, I decided to go. 4/
I confess that I didn't understand a damn thing. It all just felt very...like...nothingness. Like things were being overcomplicated and overdramatised and ideas and lenses were being added that didn't really add much at all. It was just confusing. 5/
Afterwards I asked my friends "um so how was that" almost all of them said some variation of "absolutely brilliant. I didn't really understand it - but it was brilliant"

Emmmm not for me, mate. 6/
Instead I went to a different rabbi, who was famed for the clarity of his ideas. He used to synthesise all the different opinions, lay them out clearly, explained precisely where each authority differed from the next. It was SO unsexy, but we learnt loads. 7/
There were no moments where I was like "OMGIZZLE MIND BLOWN I'M INSPIRED" it was just "yeah, cool that makes sense. nice one." And that was perfect. 8/
Feck I'm 9 tweets in and haven't got to the point. Basically, I see a lot of stuff out there in ed teaching and CPD that is just wool. It doesn't actually clarify ideas, doesn't have concrete examples, lacks detail BUT - and this is the key - makes you feel smart. 9/
This is salesman work. Where you give people a product that doesn't actually move them on, but makes them feel like something awesome has just happened. Tomorrow, nothing has changed. 10/
Be wary of big words. Be wary of the cult of charisma. Be wary of things and ideas that aren't communicated in a way that makes them readily intelligible. And be wary of that feeling of "MIND BLOWN", often it just results in nothingness. /end

More from Law

One of the judges this story mentions is William Cassidy, who was promoted from an Atlanta IJ position to a BIA member position in 2019 by the Trump DOJ. Cassidy has an awful history that has been well-documented, but I'm still enraged reading this reporting.


The story notes that the EOIR Director served as an ICE attorney in Atlanta and practiced before Cassidy for years. And it points to FOIA records unearthed by Bryan Johnson showing they remain friendly.

A trove of complaints against Cassidy was published by AILA in 2019 after FOIA litigation. They generally show misconduct, substantiated in the record, followed by "written counseling" etc.

One way Cassidy could avoid discipline is by turning off the recording device during the hearing. If he made a lewd or offensive comment off the record, all the EOIR would do is listen to the recording. If it's not there, the complaint is "unsubstantiated" https://t.co/wUeBPEEbpV


In that case, Cassidy joked about a detained immigrant saying he missed his wife. The complaint was dismissed because the ACIJ found "no levity or joking" in the comment.

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Tip from the Monkey
Pangolins, September 2019 and PLA are the key to this mystery
Stay Tuned!


1. Yang


2. A jacobin capuchin dangling a flagellin pangolin on a javelin while playing a mandolin and strangling a mannequin on a paladin's palanquin, said Saladin
More to come tomorrow!


3. Yigang Tong
https://t.co/CYtqYorhzH
Archived: https://t.co/ncz5ruwE2W


4. YT Interview
Some bats & pangolins carry viruses related with SARS-CoV-2, found in SE Asia and in Yunnan, & the pangolins carrying SARS-CoV-2 related viruses were smuggled from SE Asia, so there is a possibility that SARS-CoV-2 were coming from