LMM @LifeMathMoney has built one of the strongest brands on Twitter, brilliantly using mental models, here the top 10.

Thread

This year has been momentous, with a new virus, a new job writing about that virus (114 articles!) and many new sources, readers and Twitter followers. To chronicle this insane year, I'm compiling some of the stories I'm proudest of. A thread.

Exactly a year ago, my family and I were headed back from Vietnam, with no idea how close we had been to the outbreak brewing in China. It took me a while to realize the gravity, but this first story I wrote about the virus still (mostly) holds

In March, it became increasingly obvious from research being published that the virus could spread in the absence of symptoms. Yet US officials were still mostly pooh-poohing it. In this article I talked to scientists who knew

We know now that some of the worst effects of Covid-19 are because of the body's immune response, not just the virus itself. There were just early hints of that when I wrote this piece about cytokine

In this story in May, I delved into what we knew about the relationship between the viral dose and the risk of infection -- a topic we still know woefully little

Why are SWs freaking out right now? (This gets bumpy, hold on.)

Twitter came through and deleted a ton of accounts. We are worried that we are next. It could be nudity, it could be retweets, it could be content posted- we don't know. And while Twitter has clear rules, SWs get

Punished often for not even breaking the rules but just existing, so we are on edge.

Twitter/IG/TikTok are ways we advertise and build a base so when we get deplatformed without explanation, we have to start from scratch somewhere else. We lose years of contacts/content.

So, what is driving these tightened restrictions?

It could be a bunch of laws. FOSTA/SESTA came through a few years ago & made it very unsafe for SWs, both online and real time workers. It even crippled businesses like sex educators and therapists. This was a bipartisan effort.

Bc of these laws, platforms censored their content and users. Remember those Craigslist ads? Meet up groups? Bad date lists?

All gone when F/S came through. So let's move to EARN IT. EI is in limbo right now, just waiting on the new term to get rolling. It isn't dead.

EI is gonna be the every man's F/S. EI is gonna censor so many of YOU READING THIS and then what will you do!? (More of that later.)

Fuck. Ok. Then we have Section 230, also just fucking chillin, waiting for passing. 230 is gonna make it to where sites will be held liable

So - that was quite a twitter/media day for me, and welcome to my new followers; 3 threads coming up - introducing myself, explaining my background and COIs (this one); technical aspects of the new strain from my vantage; commentary on what is means for the future

(for the people who know me, skip the rest of this thread!)

A brief tweet portrait of me; I am deputy director general of @embl and co-direct (with Rolf Apweiler, not on twitter) one it's six sites, @emblebi which is based just south of Cambridge, UK.

is the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, a European treaty organisation that does science, similar to CERN. EMBL does molecular biology from high end atomic structural biology to development - and in the future, bridging to Ecosystems.

EMBL is Headquartered in beautiful Heidelberg, Germany and has 5 other sites; Hamburg (Germany also), Grenoble (France), EMBL-EBI at Hinxton (UK), Rome (Italy) and Barcelona (Spain).

"Leftist" twitter (i use quotation marks bc twitter leftists are bogus, not that Leftist ideology is bad) makes real progressives look really bad. And if you're wondering, *Britney Spears voice* I'm Not a Liberal, Not yet a "Leftist"

I'm fairly progressive. Elizabeth Warren was my #1. I know there are associations ppl make w white women who support her, but my black self liked her bc she has progressive values and seems fit to hold office. Bc progressivism in practice needs someone who knows how to govern.

She was called a snake by "leftists" for myriad reasons, but one of them was not quitting so Bernie could win. LMAO. Seriously.

That's when I noticed twitter "leftism" was a cult of personality. Bc if the closest person ideologically to Bernie is a snake for differing on her healthcare plan (not ideologically btw, just practically), then this shit is about that man. Not ideology.

Twitter "leftists" also have a race problem. HUGE race problem. "Solving class will help racism" is a STUPID political philosophy anyway, bc foundationally American economics is racist. Literally we're a world super power bc we didn't pay slaves for a century