We've developed a technology of civilization that works so well that many no longer remember how it was built, or why, or the misery of human life beforehand.
People sometimes use this platform to complain about negative personal experiences with services and officials. I'd like today to share a positive one about that most reviled category of person: a government bureaucrat. 1/x
I won't use names or identifying details, because I intuited the official bent some rules to help me out. I'll just say: I was facing a Canadian government agency, I required a particular form to be stamped, and I had screwed up the preconditions for getting the stamp. 2/x
I didn't have any good excuse for my screw up. I just had not paid enough attention to what I was supposed to do. And now the hammer blow was about to fall. The consequences were not exactly existential, but they were going to be fiendishly inconvenient. And worst of all ... 3/x
Speaking from Wellington, Ontario, apologies for background bird noises
I was ready for birds, but instead got the roar of a lawn tractor directly under my porch at exactly the moment the item started. Embarrassed apologies to deafened @MSNBC engineers
Interesting in in @business about why China may never overtake US economically. Authors model scenarios. Note especially the yellow line, which accounts for studies that China has been overstating its growth numbers since at least 2010. US is green line bloomberg.com/news/features/…
Meanwhile, Thailand and Indonesia are gradually replacing Chinese COVID vaccine with newly abundant Western products after healthcare workers vaccinated with Sinovac caught COVID and died bbc.com/news/world-asi…
Walking on a beach on holiday, Hughes saw a plane in the sky pulling an advertising banner. It carried a message approximately: "Jill come back, I am miserable without you, Love Jack."
She thought, "Bad message Jack. Too much about you, not enough about her." 2/x
You want Jill's vote? You have to talk about what Jill cares about. And Jill is not going to be casting a ballot in 2021 based on messaging that's incomprehensible to anyone who isn't watching hours of Fox News.
3/x
You all are aware that the federal government has policed the truthfulness of medical claims since 1906, right?
If the people who sold morphine and alcohol as "soothing syrup" had access to Twitter, they would have denounced the 1906 Food & Drug Act as pure communism, no doubt. livesandlegaciesblog.org/2020/01/31/bad…
I suppose the point is, regulating fraudulent medical claims was fine for the first 115 years. But when @PressSec went for the 116th - game over for free speech in this society!
And it's in danger of mutating into a new and more hyper-infectious pandemic *because of* the willfully unvaccinated.
Many state governments are actively making things worse. Alabama has forbidden private businesses to refuse service to unvaccinated people. legiscan.com/AL/text/SB267/…