Cutting the Cord: Social Media edition

 I have been reluctant to quit twitter despite all of the Musk-ness.  I have built up a pretty cool network of followers and followees over the past 14 years, and I didn't want to lose that.  Path dependence/sunk costs are a thing--as are network effects.  But Musk has made twitter a Nazi house party--this weekend's attacks on the Anti-Defamation League, cheered on by real life Nazis.  That Musk embraced anti-semitic conspiracy bullshit is not surprising given that he has already proven to be transphobic (at the expense of his kid), racist, and more.  All those hatreds tend to travel together, but Musk didn't have to platform and amplify them.  That was his choice, and since he has made Twitter not just a social media company, but his play thing, it was time for me to pull the ripcord.  Yes, I know that twitter has long been a hostile place to many groups, but I found my pieces of community there.  Now?  Oy.

So, what did I get out of twitter?  How about the classic listicle to ponder what we are losing?

• Friends.  Yep, real life friends from silly virtual interactions.  This is what has been most valuable and what I hope I can carry over to the alternatives.  Twitter fight club, for instance, did an amazing job of not only connecting me with tons of sharp national security folks--scholars, analysts, practitioners in DC and elsewhere--but helping to foster friendships, even with those that denied me a victory.  
• Icebreaking.  I was able to use the tenuous, virtual connections to meet people I would never have met.  While I started out mostly focusing on those most directly related to my research and other interests, I began to use twitter to meet the next generations of scholars and policy-makers and especially those from different backgrounds.  My feed got increasingly diverse over the years.
  
• Expertise.  All those connections gave me quick ways to catch up stuff around the world.  I am not only a deeply curious person, but I also need to know stuff that is going on for my classes and for engagement (more on that below).
• Research.  For me the civ-mil community has been so great on twitter--learning of ongoing projects, getting perspectives on the stuff, building panels for conferences, etc.  
  
• Engagement (that didn't take long).  I developed connections with and friendships with journalists in Canada, the US, and even occasionally elsewhere.  This made it easier to have productive conversations for stories they were working on, and I would occasionally get some handy info as well.
• ENGAGEMENT.  Not just journalists but folks in the policy world and in the public and in the political world.  So strange to have members of parliament and admirals and other folks follow my stuff.  I know that the public affairs folks at the Canadian Department of National Defence were following what I have been spewing on twitter.  Twitter has helped me bridge all kinds of gaps.
• CDSN.  The Canadian Defence and Security Network probably wouldn't exist without twitter.  It helped foster connections that led to partnerships and a credible "knowledge dissemination strategy" for sharing our work with the public and the policy world. We used twitter to try to get audiences for our events, to get folks to apply for our various opportunities, and so on.  Twitter's collapse is going to make a dent in our efforts, but we are lucky this is happening so deep into our run than if it had been year 1.
  
• Promotion
• Other: I have greatly enjoyed connecting folks to exciting work I have found.  I got more deliberate over time about promoting the work of junior folks.
  
• Self: twitter was always handy for promoting my own stuff.  Indeed, the fact that I started twitter about two months after I started blogging is no coincidence. I have used twitter to promote my research projects as they have bumped along, the products (hey, you want to find a good cheap book on NATO....?), the events I have been organizing, and all that.  One of the strange realizations over the past few years is that I have some influence in Canada via my ramblings online--twitter, blogging, the podcasts.  I don't get additional pay to be an influencer, but I get more media attention and govt attention because I am loud on social media. 
  
• Fun.  So much fun stuff. 
• I have met virtually some folks who featured bigly in pop culture--Henry Winkler and Morgan Fairchild to name the most obvious cases.  I have had conversations with my cooking muse Nigella Lawson.  Mark Hamill even liked one of my tweets.  
• I have found cool podcasts via twitter.  
• I have enjoyed the snark and the memes about all things--political and otherwise
• Twitter became a more hostile place over time, even before Musk, but there was always room for heaps of humor and silliness.
  
• Fixes.  I have complained about some companies which led to their responding to me and getting my problem fixed. Other times, folks have provided solicited and unsolicted advice that has been most helpful.  

 What am I going to do next?  Bluesky.  Same address--@smsaideman.bsky.social.  I have tried Mastodon and Post, but neither really took.  I am avoiding threads for now.  Bluesky seems to have much potential and feels kind of 2011 twitter.  Much snark, easy to use, not too much noise.  I hope to build networks there from those that I had developed over the years at twitter.  I will post announcements over at twitter since I had something like 19k followers over there.  But I am not going to visit that often, moving my app to off the front page of my phone.  I will check out mentions and such because ... FOMO and narcissism.  

I will also blog more--that instead of 12 threaded tweets, I just will jump over here and post something.  Like the olden days of June 2009.

What will you miss about twitter?

Tweet Too Much? Nay

On this occasion of my, yes, 300,000th tweet, I ponder whether I tweet too much.  

Uum, yeah.  How do I know it is too much?  Well, back in the olden days of twitter, I wouldn't add someone to my feed if they tweeted as much as I did, as I tried to read everything that went through my feed.

So, why do I tweet so much?  Part of it is that I respond to folks and engage in conversations.  This can lead to a lot of tweets in a short period of time.  And I like to chat with a lot of people on twitter. 

Part of is that I prefer to retweet rather than like a tweet, as I save my likes for bookmarking tweets.  I also like to amplify emerging scholars, but I am not sure how much that adds to my tweet total.  

I almost certainly tweet less about pop culture stuff than I used to, but my work stuff has been far more relevant these days--the civ-mil crisis in Canada, the end of the allied war in Afghanistan, the failed Russian irredentist campaign--which might be replacing some of my older twitter stuff.

Oh, and twitter has replaced some of my blogging--that I will do a ten tweet thread rather than blog about something. 

Plus, these days, I do a fair amount of tweeting to advertise and amplify the CDSN and the activities/outputs of its partners/members.  

Much of it is that I lack focus, so I engage in conversations and respond to tweets all over the map--not just in my area of expertise but in pretty much anything that catches my eye. There are many squirrels out there.

This kind of covers it:

Twitter: https://t.co/gwtfVSImiE

— Alexander McCoy (@AlexanderMcCoy4) May 2, 2022

To celebrate this milestone (or is it a benchmark?), I am bringing back one of my oldest blogging bits: how twitter has surprised, troubled, enchanted, and humbled me.

• I am surprised where twitter has taken me.  Through this app and network, I have been able to connect with journalists, policy-makers, academics, politicians, and others around the world.  This has facilitated my research as I have found important articles that I would otherwise have missed, it has connected me to people I then interviewed for my projects, it has given me new perspectives so I can see things from beyond my narrow lenses, and, yes, I have been corrected on many occasions when I professed without a good understanding of the facts of the situation.  
• I am most troubled by how my twitter experience is so different from other people.  I haven't faced anything like the abuse some people get on twitter--that being a white straight guy is just a very different experience.  I stopped being a super twitter-evangelist when I realized that my experience is not so typical, and I started being more conscious about following and retweeting and responding to those who tend to be targeted-- women, the LGBTQ+, religious minorities, and people of color.  I could and should do more, and this milestone will remind me to do so.  
• I am enchanted by the communities of support that have arisen in this space even though/despite of/in reaction to the stuff I just noted.  For instance, the #civmil community of scholars is a great group on twitter, where folks provide citations, feedback, info, and coordinate for panels/conferences/etc.   I am also enchanted by the interactions I have had on twitter with some of the stars that made an impact on me way back when, whether it is the Fonz, Luke Skywalker, or the muse of NatSecTwitter, Morgan Fairchild.  That Nigella Lawson responds to my tweets about her great recipes is very enchanting indeed.  Twitter may not be a leveler, but it is a connector.
• 
  I am humbled that people follow me and engage me even though I spew too much on twitter and am all over the place. That I have had more tweets get far more interaction than any one of my publications or even perhaps all of my publications should make me more cautious about what I say.  When people meet me in person and say they follow me on twitter, my first instinct is to blush and apologize for tweeting too much.

This reminds me of a story from my year in the Pentagon (you can hear my students groaning at another reference to that experience) where a colonel complimenting me on speaking up at a small meeting involving our three star boss.  I told him my problem is not the need to speak more but the inability to speak less.  And, yeah, at 300,000 tweets, I really haven't learned to talk less.  Yeah, I have some self-awareness but not a lot of self control.  So, there's that.

Which means I can conclude with only one song: 

How Twitter Closes the Civil-Military Gap

Last night and this morning, a series of tweets about civil-military relations identified and then helped close a gap in civil-military relations.  Yes, twitter about military stuff can be quite productive as it provides a place with those with military expertise from different perspectives can meet and chat.  I will present the tweets below with some play-by-play along the way:

Amidst the news about everything else, a reminder that civilian control doesn’t work without transparency https://t.co/5o4IHHLpcs

— Risa Brooks (@RisaBrooks12) September 24, 2019

Risa Brooks has written much on civil-military relations so she has a great background to raise a key issue--that civilian control of the military involves not just the executive branch of the government behind closed doors running the armed forces.  As I have argued with my colleagues (hmm, that makes it sound like Dave, Phil, and I would be arguing amongst each other--never!), without anyone else involved, executives (Presidents/Prime Ministers, SecDefs, Ministers of Defense) can be tempted to hide mistakes and maybe even use the armed forces in inappropriate ways when non one is looking.  Hence my response:

I have become a firm believer that civilian control of the military refers to not just the executive but to:
--legislature
--the media
--other informed civilian sectors (academia, think tanks).

The latter help to mitigate the expertise and info asymmetries.

— Steve Saideman (@smsaideman) September 24, 2019

Because we think civilian control of the military is too important to be left to executives who might hide or cheat, the Steve/Dave/Phil project is focused on legislatures, but it is more than that.  Legislatures vary quite widely, as we are finding out, in how they oversee the armed forces.  Some have more power and independence and information than others.  We are just now starting to reach some conclusions, so this may be premature and may only fit the cases I studied (Japan, South Korea, Germany, Chile, Brazil), but I tended to have seen that legislatures did more when they had more alternative sources of information (from pesky folks like academics, think tanks, etc) and when the media had the expertise and effort to shine a spotlight on military issues.  That is, for legislatures to be relevant, they could not be alone--they needed allies in this [I will get to Ministries of Defense some other time].

The word "control" implies a degree of relationship which I do not think exists outside the Executive

— D. Michael Day (@DMike_Day) September 24, 2019

Mike Day is a retired three star Canadian general, who I have chatted with in real life and twitter many times.  He raises a fundamental issue for military folks--that control is a very important word and not that many people have it.  I went to bed thinking about this response and was glad to awaken to have someone else carry on the conversation and clarify.

1/3 There is an interesting distinction in mil and civ circles as to what "control" means. In civ parlance it generally means the ability to set objectives, policies and maintain accountability

— John Keess (@jhkeess) September 24, 2019

For the conventional academic meaning, it builds on the basic question, what I call a second generation issue (first generation of civ-mil focused on coups) of civilians making sure the military follows the intent of the civilians.  While democracies can vary in whether there are two bosses (US where President and Congress both "own" the armed forces) or one (just the executive) (Avant), a recurring question is whether the military shirks or not (Feaver).  Military folks hate this notion of "shirking" which can mean doing less than asked for, more, or different.  My favorite example of late has been the US Air Force not forwarding information to the FBI about domestic violence, so that their people don't end up on the lists of folks who can't buy guns. 

2/3 In mil doctrine, this is much closer to "command", with "control" being the physical means of relaying orders and maintaining contact. If you imagine an HQ, the CO might "command" but his Ops O does the "control

— John Keess (@jhkeess) September 24, 2019

Keess here shows that we are talking past each other, as the military folks tend to have a different notion of control.  But civilian command of the military does not sing to scholars of civil-military relations. 

3/3 I'm not sure how much this adds save that the distinction probably makes the discussion between uniforms, tweed jackets and frock coats a little confused as to what exactly "control" means

— John Keess (@jhkeess) September 24, 2019

I have no idea who Keess is.  He is a person who does not tweet much, has not that many followers, does not follow that many people, but ended up following me somehow, and added quite significantly to this conversation.

People may disagree with my take, Mike's view, and/or John Keess's clarification, but to me, this has been a damned useful conversation, one that I have not had in real life.  While twitter is incredibly flawed in so many ways, that it can bring together people with diverse experiences and outlooks and provide a place for conversations that lead to some clarification makes it not entirely bad.  As I have seen repeatedly, the conversations on civil-military relations on twitter are very often quite productive and interesting.  Last night/this morning's conversation is actually pretty typical for this topic.  And with the next generation of smart, interesting, and, thankfully, engaging civ-mil scholars joining the many folks who have military experience, we can ameliorate some of the gaps between the "uniforms" and "tweeds".

Rock on!

FFS!

I learned it from Footloose:
"a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance,"

and, yeah, from the song, which I probably have to thank the Wonder Years for.

So, when I see this:

Even more unpopular opinion: Respected academics should watch their language in public. https://t.co/FiyZG4tUop

— John Ibbitson (@JohnIbbitson) July 28, 2019

My response is to say: fuck that!

While I curse quite a bit at home (our daughter was cursing like a sailor long before she hit her late teen years), I almost never curse when I am teaching.  When I started blogging and then tweeting ten years ago, I also avoided cursing.  But something changed that produced not just the repeated FFS (where the profanity is only slightly hidden) but a more frequent appearance of Fuck!  That would probably be the election of 2016.  A quick check of my blog shows that most, not all, of the times I have used profanity (defined as fuck or shit but not FFS) have been since Trump began campaigning.  Not all uses are related to Trump, but most. 

Why?  Because I am and have been fucking outraged!  So much unnecessary bullshit that has harmed real people.  These are not imagined casualties but an actual body count caused by Trump's incitement of violent, deliberate incompetence at the border and in Puerto Rico, and on and on.  I find it outrageous for people not to be outraged at what has been going on in both US domestic and foreign policy.

And how to express outrage?  By using profanity.  These are not normal times, and we should not behave as if they are.  While Emmett used it in reference to the Chateau Laurier expansion shit-show, his point was a larger one--that we are focused on this rather than the awful stuff going on not just in the US but in Canada with Quebec legislating against religious minorities and the Conservative Party being (dare I say it) infested with white nationalists (see Rebel media folks). 

So, yeah, there is a time to dance and there is a time to fucking curse!

Self-Promotion in IR: Necessary?

Dan Nexon had an epic tweetstorm about the need to self-promote yesterday which got many responses.  The basic gist, I believe, is: academic work does not often speak for itself. That once you publish something, there is so much out there that unless you promote it, the work will just disappear.  That self-promotion is necessary. 

As readers of the Semi-Spew could guess, I don't disagree.  I don't think there is a single best way to promote one's work.  I use a portfolio approach (or a shotgun approach), where I try to share my stuff in a variety of ways.  Sure, I tweet and I blog (the twitter conversation sure pooh-poohed blogs, but the Semi-Spew and posts I put up elsewhere certainly get more eyeballs than most academic articles). But I also do conventional media, appear at conferences, give talks, chat folks up.

My list of things I don't do to self-promote is easier to write than the stuff that I do.

1. I don't email blast folks about what I have been doing. 

I don't regard email as a broadcasting system, but as a way to communicate professional and/or personally with individuals and small groups about stuff.  But mostly not self-promotion.  Sure, I do inform some folks about things I am doing via email, but that is mostly chit-chat and not efforts to get folks to read my stuff.

Why seek to share one's stuff?  Fortune and glory, kid, fortune and glory.  Actually, no.  For younger folks, it is about survival--that tenure letters, invitations to workshops and small conferences, networking opportunities all are better if folks know who you are and what you are doing.  For older folks like myself, who have few moves left and no more promotions, it is something else.  For me, as I receive government money for my salary and for my grants, I feel obligated to disseminate my work (many grants require "knowledge mobilization plans).

Most importantly, as a scholar, I feel that it is not enough to "create knowledge" (that high falutin' phrase always triggers me a smidge)--that once one has an idea, part of the job is to share it. With students, with peers, with relevant audiences.  So, it is not just about self-interest but about identity, obligation and norms. It really is in the job title: professor.  To profess means to say or to declare (the online definitions then include "sometimes falsely" which is not supposed to be what professors do). Our job is to learn and then to share what we learn. So, self-promotion is not just about advancing one's career, although that is certainty part of it, but it is also about doing the job.

There is much one can say about this basic challenge--that academic work does not speak for itself--so this conversation will continue.   The one thing I would add is that it is not just about self-promotion but other-promotion.  I don't read as much as I should, but when I find stuff that I like, that impacts me, I do promote it.  Especially, these days, if the work is by folks who are underrepresented.  Hence my lists of best books that often tend to be focused on the contributions of female scholars.

Can there be such a thing as too much self-promotion?  Probably, but the current debate suggests that the bigger problem is too little self-promotion.

Why Twitter?

Twitter gets lots of criticism, and rightly so, for not handling abuse well and for helping to circulate fake news.  It is easy for me to dismiss the dark side since I get far less abuse than women, LGBT folks, and people of color.  But I have have received some abuse, so why do it?  A key tweeter asked this, in response to his mom's question.

@raulpacheco I get to interact with sharp, interesting people in my areas of interest. Plus I like to talk ... a lot #overlyhonestacademic

— Steve bin Said (@smsaideman) December 28, 2016

So, I have both silly and serious reasons:

Silly:

@smsaideman happy new year to you !

— Henry Winkler (@hwinkler4real) December 29, 2016

Yes, I get to engage with famous folks like Henry Winkler and Morgan Fairchild.  Which is pretty cool.  Also, heaps of fun and silly pictures, videos, stories and tweets themselves get shared across the planet.  So, as entertainment, twitter is mighty entertaining.

Serious:
Besides from relentless self-promotion (pretty sure twitter has helped me sell my books), twitter is very important for me professionally:

• I learn more about more places, people, and events more quickly via twitter than any other way.  I don't like TV news, and newspapers always have limited international coverage.  As a professor of international affairs and one without a real regional focus, following a variety of people gets me links and views about all kinds of places.  Sure, it then becomes hard to consume all of it, but I get more glimpses of more stuff via twitter, and they almost always provide me with pathways to learning more if I so choose, than any other way.  While I was wrong in college to believe that being a prof would mean that I would have endless time to read fun books, the idea of endless learning is still key to my idea of my job and my identity.  Twitter helps with that.
• I have connected with people in government that have facilitated my research projects.  These people have busted the myths I have bought into, have shared insights that have led to new research directions, and have referred me to interesting people to interview.
• I have connected with scholars around the world--leading to exchanges of information, insights, contacts, and more.  Indeed, twitter has helped to create a community of scholars in my field (and others) so that we have better support networks, clear ideas of what is going on in our disciplines, and more.
• I know journalists via twitter and can both ask them questions and provide them with my take on stuff.  Without twitter, I would not have this ability to engage with reporters, columnists, anchors, and editors in Canada, the US and elsewhere. 
• Fundamentally, twitter has helped to bridge various gaps, but especially the one between academia and policy communities.  Thanks to twitter, and especially twitter fight club, I now have friends, some of whom I have met in real life, in think tanks, corporations, lobbyist groups, non-governmental organizations, and the like in DC, Ottawa and other national capitals.  The recurrent question is whether we academics are relevant?  The answer, in part, for me is twitter--that I get to share my views and the views of other academics, the stuff we have learned through research, reading, publication and the rest, with those in government and near government. 

And, oh yeah, I like to talk a lot.

Twitter in the Age of Trump

Lots of folks are very critical of twitter these days, and rightfully so as they have not banned those who use threats and who are abusive.  Despite receiving some abuse, I still find twitter to be more boon than bane for me.  Sure, it is easier for me as a white guy.  Of course, my heritage gives anti-semitic trolls something to focus on.

Will I leave twitter?  No, it is a great way to engage in Voice. Plus I have that FOMO--fear of missing out syndrome.

So, how do I proceed?

• I block
• People who are abusive
• People who are entirely reality averse
• People who have Deplorable in their name, references to white supremacy/misogyny/Islamphobia in their profiles

• I mute
• People who are annoying but not utterly offensive
• People who fill up my feed with lots of mentions when I have asked not to be included in a particular conversation
•  Trolls

• I engage
• People who treat me with respect
• People who treat others with respect
• People who argue with me even if they differ with me on most stuff

• I ignore
• No one really.  I wish I could not rise to the bait, but unlike Trump, I know I have this problem, so I mute or block people that try to get a rise out of me.
• I don't hit links in tweets if there is no other text in the tweet.  

• I tweet about stuff inside and outside my area of expertise. I will defend stuff that I know very well, but I will move on if it is area that is not a strength. 
• I will not be someone's research assistant if they ask me for examples of stuff they can easily find.  Indeed, demanding me to do stuff I don't want to do is a good way to get muted or blocked. 

Again, twitter has been mighty good to me.  I have learned how to minimize the negative stuff, although it can still be annoying/aggravating and more.  And I can keep with it because I have tenure, because I am white and male.  I recognize my privilege.  I believe my status imposes a responsibility to engage as much as I can within some limits.  And I shall continue to do so even as I hope that twitter develops some tools to reduce the abuse.

The Double Edged Sword of Internet Anonymity

Like any technology, the internet can be used for good or bad.  Lots of folks complain that anonymity protects the trolls.  But anonymity can protect the people who want to speak out without being discriminated against.

Perhaps a clear tale of the dynamics going both ways involve Academic Batgirl.  Yep, Academic Batgirl.  Here's her tale.  I had seen her tweets get re-tweeted and enjoyed much of what she had to say: a nice mix of snark and insight and a perspective by a female academic faced with many challenges that white guys like me know little about.  Her use of pictures and memes and her reliance on one of my favorite characters growing up have made her stuff quite appealing to me.

Alas, of course, some asshole has to try to squelch her.  Someone figured out who she is and then threatened her.  Which sucks.  I wish we had this guy's identity so that he could pay some social consequences, but I guess she chooses not to identify him to minimize the risks to herself.  And I get that.  My satisfaction at shaming someone is less important than her ability to return to the internet and be the voice that is so very powerful.

Given my posts of late about the paucity of women full professors, this is great news:



So, congratulations and welcome back, Academic Batgirl. We need superheroes like you to inspire and inform.

Rabble Rouser? Moi?

I had an epiphany that would surprise few followers of the Spew: I am a rabble rouser.  I wasn't always this way.  Sure, I would whine and be outraged, but other than annoying those closest to me, it had little impact.  I was never much of an activist.

I went to all of one protest in my four years at Oberlin, where protests were aplenty.  And that protest was pretty spontaneous:  we were annoyed at the OC Republicans for arranging Ronald Reagan Appreciation Day somewhere around 1986.  It was trolling before trolling was cool.  Oh, and the guy leading it was Jacob Heilbrunn of the National Interest.

The difference between before and now is, of course, the internet.  My whining/complaining/outraging now gets read by between one to seven thousand and eight people (the ISA blogging mess) via the Spew or 7,120 twitter followers.  Another difference: folks have noticed and feed me stuff to get me outraged and then to spew..  The ISA blogging ban was the most obvious case.  My question this week about female full professors of color in IR is another. 

I am sure that my friends and colleagues in my various departments along the way are not surprised as I don't have much of a filter (although ISA is handy for running into people who make me feel restrained by comparison).  I generally don't mean to start up a ruckus, but when I learn stuff while online, I tend to blog and tweet about what I learn.  And then sometimes a ruckus ensues.  Sometimes one post leads to a reaction and then to another.  Perhaps it is also because there is so much silly stuff on the net that I have more reactions that turn into rabble rousing.

Anyhow, today I realized that there is a bit of a pattern here.  What to do about it?  Probably not much, as the world continues to provide stuff to trigger the Semi-Spew.  We shall see where this modicum of self-awareness goes.

Fair vs. Unfair Criticism/Comments

One of the general rules of decency for job talks that frequently gets violated is to ask questions that push the candidate within the scope/framework that the candidate has chosen.  Instead, what frequently happens is this kind of question: "why didn't you do the project the way I would have done the project?"  

Why am I talking about this?  Because I am miffed.  I have had a bit of a problem with Windows 10, which has been mostly good thus far.  It tends to want to do things when I connect my phone.  All I want to do is charge my phone and sometimes move some files around.  I don't want to be asked repeatedly about W10 looking for files or wanting to set something up.  I griped about it, and, inevitable as the sun coming up, someone said: get a mac.

My basic answer: fuck off.  I have what I have, which ain't a mac.  I need to fix what I have and not spend heaps on apple products.  That is what my daughter is for.  Oh, and me, too, with my ipad and ipod. 

If someone complains while being on a Delta flight, telling them to use airline x is not of much help.  Indeed, I use United, which gets a heap of abuse and rightly so.  But it works for me plus heaps of path dependence.

So, the internet/twitter rule should be: help the person with what they have and don't evangelize about your favorite kind of system. 

Twitter Year in Review

Twitter analytics goes back as far as three months, so instead of a year in review, here is a quick statistical summary of each quarter.

My post election tweet was the most visible/engaged, whatever that means.  My second was commenting on Victor Assal's tweet that polls show that most in eight Muslim majority countries blame repressive, corrupt governments for rise of ISIS.  NATO point had to be repeated this year--nothing automatic about Article V even after Paris ttacks.  Promoting a media hit came in fourth, and criticizing quick criticism of Trudeau government's plan to bring in refugees..  Perhaps a typical quarter?  Let's check the rest of the year out.