THREAD: Questions to Keir Starmer's spokesperson this afternoon 🧵

Remember: Just because an idea is old doesn't mean it's good.

Knowing whether old ideas are more likely to be good requires understanding whether conditions have changed in important ways.

Horse archery was an amazing method of warfare for over a thousand years...then people invented guns, and suddenly this great idea that had stood the test of time became obsolete.

Then again, when underlying conditions don't change much, tried-and-true approaches are probably better.

"Learning the lessons of history" usually just means assuming ergodicity and stationarity in an informal time-series model...

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If you know me, you know I don't like broadcasting details about my personal life on this website, but I have been getting asked why I'm not doing Christmas this year so I just wanna put this whole mess to bed. First of all, I don't agree with gay marriage... (1 of 4,625)

... full of dog food and she said, "I'm pretending this is ice cream! Treat me like a baby!" and proceeded to hump her own arm and I thought, "something tells me this isn't the real Norah Jones"... (117 of 4,625)

...cost me $7,000. I had to put it on two separate credit cards! It wasn't 'til I got to my car that I realized "that's way too expensive for one onion." But I didn't have time. Amanda Seyfried was begging to change my diaper... (1,001 of 4,625)

...another Christmas miracle. Mistletoe, stockings, sleigh bells, snow! All these things I have put up my ass. The taste of coffee... (2,974 of 4,625)

...I felt a *very* cold finger on my cheek and I turned around and I said, "Grandma?" and she goes, "Surprise, I'm alive and I work at Sears!" I said, "okay"... (3,047 of 4,625)

One wonders how long Lord Frost will retain his new position. The personnel decisions made by the PM are nothing if not frequent, ruthless and mercurial.

The whole affair is very curious. While I am sure that Lord Frost’s elevation owes much to his relationship with the PM and the perceived success of the Brexit negotiation, it is very curious indeed that allegedly it took a threat to resign to secure this new role.

A role which is needed (although might have been structured differently) but was to a large effect previously undertaken (with reasonable success) by Michael Gove who one might imagine may not be entirely happy with this diminishment of his responsibilities.

What might have happened to have resulted in this dramatic and to some extent destructive move (which appears to have been played out in the context of a wider struggle that saw Oliver Lewis (previously Lord Frost’s (LF) negotiation deputy)?

The original sin, of course, is the agreement to the Northern Ireland Protocol. Who knows who did what to who or thought what about what but my speculation is the PM either did not understand the consequences of the Protocol or was assured they could be successfully addressed.

As many of you know, I was apart of the white evangelical tradition. I have talked about things I learned about being Black in white spaces. Now I want to say some things about what I learned about once being a Black evangelical returning back to the Black church.

A thread.

Spending years in white evangelical churches and schools, specifically from 2012-2018, shapes Black people in more ways than we would like to admit. It shapes us to diminish Blackness, devalue our people’s story, and always test what we have against the white logic and litmus.

This is particular reality for us Black men in that space. White Christians exploit our vulnerabilities, give us the room to speak, while simultaneously subverting and devaluing Black women and their struggles and their grievances. Opportunities abound for us and we take them.

We are invited into the meetings, we are given the mic, we are asked to lead groups on race, the Black church, etc. We are asked though often we actually haven’t read or thought deeply about each. We become a weapon. Profiting and policing/punishing those who get out of line.

All the while, white Christians feel good about themselves and other Black people are left to clean up the mess we’ve made, the ways we’ve made fools of Black folk, and the harmful ways we’ve learned to think, and to preach, and to be around us. It is profoundly depressing.