🧵on the Toronto area SGTF (S-Gene Target Failure) study to detect B117 (UK variant). It looked at 11,485 positive tests over Dec 16 to Feb 3 and found 448 had SGTF* (3.9%). These charts show the growth.
https://t.co/5L8tF0MwDv

2. Note: Not every SGTF is B117 but almost all were confirmed with WGS (whole genomic sequencing). Rt for the SGTF was 1.17, non-SGTF were .82 meaning SGTF had an Rt 44% higher. This means that B117 is growing quickly (80% per week in recent weeks) and is projected to overtake

3. the old variants around Feb 20th in the Toronto area. Because the Rt (reproduction number) was only .82 without B117, we know the lockdown was working well in Toronto. It's only because the variant was a small share that infections and cases fell. If it had reached 100%,

4. then every infection would have infected 1.17 more infections and we would have had exponential growth EVEN IN LOCKDOWN where we have seen cases plummet.

5. This data is for the Toronto area. The projections have uncertainty - Feb 20 is approximate but once B117 becomes increasingly dominant over the next 6 weeks, current lockdown efforts would be hard-pressed to stop R from moving above 1, meaning an exponential growth in cases.

The Venn diagram of pundits insisting AOC was being over dramatic & of pundits who helped normalize the violent rhetoric is a circle & I need us to stop pretending that their hands are clean. They would have cheered a lynching & they're saying that loud & clear.

Some of the people who stormed the building definitely meant to kill people. That's not even up for debate. They said it into the camera. So, ask yourself what value there is in trying to invalidate AOC or anyone else talking about the fear? They expressed no sympathy or remorse

They are invested in dehumanizing AOC & everyone else that was a target. That still is a target. But what are they protecting here? The hate? It's not the party or the process. It's not the future. Hell for many of them I've seen it's not even their career. So what's the point?

The only answer is that they don't want anyone to ask how much they have (and continue to) normalize & espouse violent rhetoric. They know what they are encouraging. They just hope you don't. This is the "equal rights, equal fights" crowd & what they really hate is equality.

But more than that they hate women. And their real fear is that AOC can do what Black women & other women they target did not...engender some measure of accountability inside the Right. The way racism is set up they know Cori Bush & others won't trigger it. But AOC might...

[Thread] Ok, I suppose I should talk a little about this whole Gina Carano/Cara Dune #Holocaust cancel situation.

She shared this image (among others) which led to her censure (not censor) by Disney, etc.

CW: sexual violence/violence

#CaraDune
#GinaCarano
#CancelDisneyPlus ?

A brief grading of her statements:
Jews were beaten in the streets by neighbors including children ✅
Not by Nazi soldiers❌
History is edited❌
Govts made neighbors hate Jews✅-ish
This isn't different from conservatives being criticized❌

Carano is a conservative known to post offensive right-wing statements (it's not the 1st time) and the suggestion that conservatives are in any way similar to Holocaust victims is certainly offensive. Interesting how she got some things right while missing her own absurdity.

BUT...I'd really like to talk more about this image which is graphic and shocking and is now flying around the internet with no context. As I am finishing a book on #Janowska that covers the local circumstances of this image, I thought I would take a moment to talk about it.

The image of the woman was taken in Lviv, Ukraine (Lvov/Lwow/Lemberg) in July 1941 shortly after the Nazis had invaded and occupied the city. The majority of those pictured later abusing Jews ARE neighbors (Ukrainian or Polish) and this July Pogrom was encouraged by the Nazis.

One of the most remarkable things about #Jews is that they are vocal enough to not let their history disappear from the worldwide narrative. A majority of the world’s population is taught about the #Holocaust, and how evil Adolf Hitler was.
(1/14)

But, figures like Stalin, Lenin, Churchill, Akbar, and Nehru are still glorified. They were no less than Adolf Hitler.
(2/14)

Being case-specific here, as per various estimates, Hindus have been wiped away from their native land of Bharat in a huge number, it ranges from 300-400 million.
(3/14)

Hindus are much larger in population as compared to Jews but are not united enough to be vocal about their past. Okay, for a moment if we let go of everything till the 19th century, there still is a lot that Hindus have been suffering in their own land.
(4/14)

Our curriculum doesn’t even mention the #KashmiriPandit exodus of 1990 which is a recent major event. Even the horrific tales of partition are sugar-coated with the Charkha-Khadi-Ahinsa narrative.
(5/14)

It's true that a sufficiently high UBI could serve as an alternative to a $15 minimum wage, but I personally would prefer a combo of both plus a 4-day 32-hour week. Let's pay people more for work, support all unpaid work, and distribute employment and leisure time more equitably.

What the left needs to be honest about in regards to a $15 min wage is that although the overall effects will likely be positive, there will be impacts like reduced hours to compensate. Let's lean into that by leaving the 5-day 40-hour week behind. Every weekend should be 3 days.

It's also likely that a higher min wage will increase automation. Great! Let's do that! But that means less employment for humans. 4-day weeks share the available employment better, and universal basic income makes automation literally work for

UBI makes sure that micro-level responses to a higher minimum wage don't reduce people's total incomes if hours drop, or drop incomes to zero. For that person who can't find a job to pay them $15/hr, they can have $1500/mo vs $0. And unpaid workers would have $1500/mo vs $0 too.

If all we did was redefine full-time as 32 hours, businesses would need to pay more per hour so that employees got paid the same for less time. That would distribute leisure time better and I think raise productivity, but it wouldn't raise total incomes, which need to be raised.

Listening to a @jbouie livechat about the filibuster right now and it's made it clear: the filibuster (and particularly reconciliation as a workaround) hasn't just bottled up progressive legislation, but it's warped the entire constitutional system in subtle-but-fundamental ways.

Reconciliation is the only way to get a law through Congress most of the time, and most of Congress's authorities, to regulate or pass social legislation, are inaccessible in reconciliation.

So the role of Congress has shifted. Instead of the broad national legislature envisioned by Article I - a body to rule over the whole country and direct its government - Congress has become, in most cases, an agency for management of the federal budget.

The existence of reconciliation as an exception to the filibuster is essential to this shift. If reconciliation didn't exist, Congress would be sidelined almost completely, paralyzed, and what would likely happen is that frustrated majorities would just end the practice entirely.

But because of reconciliation, there's actually a pathway to legislating - it's just bound by a strict set of rules that actually dramatically alter the scope of how Congress can act. Thus most of Congress's work gets channeled through those limits, narrowing its practical power.

Let's talk menstrual cups and periods. Ask me whatever questions you have and I'll do my best to answer.

I have been using a cup since June 2020 and it has literally freed me. I use a Sirona Small. I've answered some really common questions below.

1. The best way to find your size is a finger test. You will need to insert a finger in your vagina and then find your size. This video will help

2. Don't go by the descriptions on the menstrual cup website. Your age has nothing to do with your cervix size. Your size can't be changed unless you give birth. So, you have to measure it. Make sure to measure it when you are close to your period.

3. When you pick a brand, pick one that is FDA approved. This ensures the brand has used quality silicone for the cup. You can check the measurements for Sirona Small and approximate for other brands. I bought mine from Amazon.

4. Women have 3 different holes which connect to three different systems in the body. Your vagina connects to the reproductive system. Your urethra or pee hole connects to the excretory system and your poo hole/butthole is the final step of your digestive system.

@Olivia_Rodrigo's "drivers license" is all in 4/4, but uses some VERY creative phrasing to create a sense of suspense! cc @SwitchedOnPop @Top40Theory @TheDanielNigro

each verse is 7 bars long, with 6 lines and one bar of rest. Your ears expect 8, but you get an odd number. (1/5)

Rodrigo sings the last line, "Crying 'cause you weren't around," then her voice drops out, leaving you in the emptiness of the music...

But then, a piano chord pitchshifts down as the next section starts up a bar early, as if she's interrupted by her own thoughts. (2/5)

similarly, each chorus is 10(!) bars long. The first four lines are two pairs of 3 bars, which is pretty uncommon...

But just as you get used to it, the last two lines have twice as many syllables - and cut off the chorus unresolved in only 2 bars! (3/5)

The bridge is more conventional, with two sets of 8 bars. It's the only part of the song that feels familiar and predictable. Olivia's going nowhere, stuck in her past memories. (4/5)

In the final chorus, she repeats the last line, resolving the song with 3 sets of 4 bars.

It's neater, but it's still not symmetrical. Where any other song would give you a chorus of 16, "drivers license" doesn't give you the satisfaction. Brilliant pop songwriting. (5/5)

The Dove symbolizes the Holy Ghost; Samaritans use the Dove symbol for Aquarian New Age. Gaga means "Senile person, bed-wetter, crazy". Michael Robinson, mentored by Boule Society Freemason Jesse Jackson, is behind Gaga.

Pope Francis released Peace Doves in 2014 which were attacked by a Crow &

1/ Republicans and Reactionaries, a thread.

There will be post-mortems ad infinitum on how Trumpism rose and fell, but those narratives will always be incompete or deliberately evasive if they don't reckon w/the fact that the GOP itself made Trump possible.

2/ It's undeniably true that we have always had fringe, extremist movements in the USA, whether Know-Nothings or Birchers. What kept them on the fringe was their comparative *political* irrelevance.

3/ Since the Goldwater campaign in 1964, however, the Republican Party began adopting elements of extremist/fringe ideations, slowly at first and then with gusto.

4/ It started with Goldwater's paeans to "State's Rights," which have always been a stalking horse for institutionalized racism. After Buckley's pro forma denunciation of the JBS, it then accelerated with incorporation of anti-UN ("anti-globalist") notions.

5/ Well-documented in the literature, the craven Southern Strategy of the late '60s through mid '70s -- another overt/covert appeal to racism (cf, the notorious Lee Atwater "n****r n****r" interview) -- continued the GOP's embracing of the hard(er) Right...

Oregon Prison Report: Voices from the Inside

"...the officers walk around without their masks on then pat us down and search our rooms and touch everything and don’t wear gloves, so I stay in my room 'cause with weak lungs getting Covid can kill me, and I am not here for life."

(Testimony from Critical Resistance PDX's (@criticalresistancepdx) Write Them All Campaign)

Snake River Correctional Institution (SRCI) / October 26th, 2020.

#ODOCKills #KateBrownKills #FreeThemAll

Thank you for sending me letters, I am at Snake River, Ontario, Ore. I have been here for 9 months and have been locked up for 17 months.

The staff here don’t wear their masks all the time and a lot of people have gotten sick with Covid, we have been on lockdown for months.

Since the lockdown I don’t come out much 'cause I have asthma, I use an inhaler, I have Alvesco 80 MCG. Also borderline diabetic, I have gained 120 lbs in 17 months.

Ideology matters, folks. I've been publicly calling Republicans a fascist party bc their only consistent ideological position is white power. Their 180° reversals on debt & national security underscore the point & make them especially dangerous. No "compromise" will fix this.

I am deeply worried that white Dems, & white folks more broadly, don't understand this point—that our national religion of whiteness will lead white Americans to embrace a neo-redemptionist politics. Nothing could be more dangerous.

The original politics of "redemption" came after the Civil War when white Americans from #bothsides found common cause in white power—suppressing migrant, white women's, & especially Black rights. This "reunion" of Rebel & U.S. soldiers at Gettysburg is a classic of the genre.

The term itself—"redemption"—comes from the white paramilitary units who sought to "redeem" their states from "Negro rule" by murdering their political opponents, especially Black southerners.

Lots of quibbling on this point, but as a historian of this movement, I think it would be correct to call theirs a proto-fascist movement.

Tabletop RPG storytime:

Milui is an orc lady abandoned at birth. Nobody except her parents would know why she was abandoned, but nowadays at a height of seven feet and shoulders broader even most orc males, it might have been because she's a freak.
(1/9)

Still, she was found by two wonderful elves who raised her as their own as best as they could. She had trouble fitting in at the often elitist Elven Society, but she did her best to make up for her muscular build by exploring typically feminine hobbies.
(2/9)

In particular she learned to create make-up herself, and was always trying to learn about how to make new shades, and new ways to make and use it. She decided to explore the world and expand her knowledge of cosmetology beyond the Elven guilds' knowledge.
(3/9)

In that process she befriended a group of adventurers with which she joined forces. On their travels, they found a campsite ravaged and abandoned. As they tried to figure out what had happened, the Cause sprang upon them.
(4/9)

A youngling green dragon. Not fully grown, but more than powerful enough to defeat a group of seasoned adventurers. Milui saw it about to attack her friends, channeling her bottled up anger into an explosive force of strength, and hacked into the beast with her sword.
(5/9)

#MakeAbleistsUncomfortable many of the concepts and values in your culture are permeated with ableism (and frequently other prejudices, esp racism). Ability, intelligence, hard work, productivity, beauty, charisma, leadership, participation (in activities, in society, etc),

independence, resilience, authority, communication, and so many more. I would say that MOST concepts in this culture are widely used in ableist ways.

So supporting disabled people isn't just a simple list of actions to do when we're around, of what the right terminology is, etc.

It's about examining the concepts, and especially what is portrayed as good/ideal and bad/something to overcome, that come up in your everyday life, and how they are used. Are they being used to prioritise some kinds of bodies and minds and social groups over others?

Are they being used to reinforce or to challenge ableist ideas and structures? Are they being used to maintain the status quo or to improve things? When you think of an intelligent person, are they more likely to be disabled or non-disabled? If the latter, are disabled people

more likely to be considered unintelligent? Does that perhaps mean that your concept of intelligence is too narrow, is unfair in some way? And does it result in you - and non-disabled society in general - devaluing the insights and minds of disabled people?

“Hey DDD, men will sleep with anything? Right?🐷” Oh boy! That’s a view I’ve heard many times before. Like a lot of folk psychology, there’s a tiny kernel of truth🌽here that's blown way out of proportion. And I think I know what it is… [1/17]

First of all: There's a full spectrum of mating pickiness both sexes. Men so picky they never lose their virginity and women with unusually low standards. There’s a lot of noise and variation. Thus, we should be sceptical about neat black and white🐧claims about the sexes. [2/17]

That being said, there are often patterns to be found in the noise. Enough to draw some conclusions about the *typical* mating behaviour of each sex, but not enough to predict the behaviour of individuals with a high degree of accuracy. [3/17]

One of those patterns appears to be that more men than women “lower their standards” when it comes to sex. But, and here’s the important part, it’s in a particular context: short-term mating. [4/17]

Humans, by and large are pair-bonded mammals. From megacities to small bands of hunter gatherers, humans seek a special partner to fall in love💕and share their life with. And as far as we know, this has been the case thousands (perhaps millions) of years. [5/17]

Vaccines against the three major killers of the world's poorest: TB, HIV and malaria are unlikely to have vaccines anytime soon unless vastly more money is committed to researching them, according to the Bill Gates-funded Gates Open Research...

Combined, HIV, TB and malaria kill up to 6 million people a year worldwide, yet the foremost leading voice for production of vaccines in the world says getting vaccines for them is not a priority. Why is that?

When one considers that only about 500 people die of TB in the United States a year, it becomes clear that millions dying in Africa, is not important enough to warrant putting more effort into researching vaccines for them

This reveals - albeit expected - a level of hypocrisy from those who claim to want to save the lives of Africans from a pandemic which doesn't even do anything to Africans, at least relative to the Big 3 killers...

Furthermore, other solutions including a hepatitis C vaccine, a combination vaccine against the four leading causes of deadly diarrhoea and a rapid TB cure have been identified by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and by extension the WHO as non-priorities