This is an insightful article about what's wrong with Google as compared to Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook.

Which actually reminds me of the difference between organic and engineered designs:

Organic or biological designs are reusable designs from the ground up. They accommodate the needs of the environment because of the generality of the architecture. They don't pretend to solve just a narrow problem.

Architectures like biology that lead to general intelligence (i.e. like you) are from the ground up built from reusable components that encourage combinatorial mixing opportunities. One can never correctly guess the needs of the environment (i.e. market).

The opposite of generalization is pre-mature optimization. A company that has is genesis as a one-product company has a bias toward optimizing the entire stack. As a consequence, it compromises reusability and thus shuts of future opportunities of evolution.

“Time is a flat circle,” Rust Cohle famously opined. I’ve always taken that as another form of the biblical proclamation that there’s nothing new under the sun. I think about that on New Year’s Day, as we unite in contrived joy at the rolling over of our astronomical odometer.

Declaring today to be no different than yesterday because of an arbitrary date change is neither novel nor insightful. But it might be worth considering in a year when we were once again reminded how craven and unreliable humanity really is—especially in the western world.

One of the great things about education is that it forces you to think about uncomfortable truths—in this case, the classic “trilemma” and the Westphalian model of statehood. Or in layman’s terms...is democracy all it’s cracked up to be? Has our focus on the individual doomed us?

It strikes me that one of our great failings as humans is that of imagination—rather, our consistent inability to imagine the comfortable, constant structures of our personal worlds crumbling. We are prisoners of the present in that way.

If I could back to 2000 and tell you that in 20 years the Twin Towers would be gone, we’d be embroiled in two decades of war, we’d have a President who supports groups that claim “6MWE” and Mary Ann from Gilligan’s Island would be one of 250k+ Americans who died of a plague...

200 followers special!

WORLD AT WAR

#WorldWar2 key events and their timeline with visual references.

Long 🧵

@ForumStrategic @SierraDeltaPk @Corpor8Xploiter @AhmAdTipu7 @Thunder07101 @WPCPSFION @ZA1N87 @ali_zarwan @schaheid @ainakhalid801 @AScf90

November 11, 1918
WORLD WAR I ENDS

Britain, France, the US, and other allies defeat Germany, bringing an end to World War I, billed as “the war to end all wars.”

January 30, 1933
HITLER APPOINTED GERMAN LEADER

Adolf Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany and later assumes dictatorial powers. German rearmament takes off.

September 1, 1939
WORLD WAR II BEGINS

Germany invades Poland, inciting Poland’s allies Britain and France to declare war on Germany.

September 17, 1939
SOVIET UNION INVADES POLAND

Working in concert with Hitler, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin orders the invasion of Poland, securing a share of Polish territory.

#LAKA

1. Beloved Friends!

Perhaps All Reading This Deserve A Little Cheering Up!  We Send Love In High Vibrations To You As You Celebrate New Beginnings!  It Would Not Be Accurate To Extend A 'Happy New Year',

For 2021 I'd like it if we stopped accusing people of racism for saying a Black person is articulate

For 2021 I'd like everyone to admit peas, outside of their delicious pod, are disgusting and not food.

For 2021 I'd like everyone to admit that the Patriots are the cheatingest franchise in the history of all pro sports and probably had Putin hack their opponents.

For 2021 I'd like it if everyone admitted REO Speedwagon and Journey are the same terrible band invented as a sick joke to annoy me

For 2021 I Really Can't Wait to go see live music but I guess imma have to wait though

Happy 2021, everyone!

To kick off the new year right, here is a thread of people that I love to follow. Check them out and follow them if you can. If we follow each other and you want to be added, please let me know.

Love,
Rata

Indian muslims have faced injustice in 2020 as we have been facing since the Independence. It was not only the year of pandemic but also year of injustice and fascism for IMs

I have made a thread with picture of few Imp events:

Thread🧶🧵👇

#NeverForget

#InshaAllahInquilab

Secular India enacted a citizenship law which guarantees citizenship for everyone except Muslims

Muslim took part in Anti CAA protest

23 muslims k!lled for merely protesting against CAA in Uttar Pradesh

Muslim student leaders like Sharjeel Imam,Sharjeel Usmani,Umar Khalid were arrested under draconian UAPA for demanding justice and equal rights while the real Terr*rist are sent to the parliament

Students like Safoora Zargar, Gulfisha Fatima,Ishrath Jahan were arrested under draconian laws for protesting against injustice while criminals like Komal Sharma and Ragini Tiwari are still roaming free

I spoke to 1,700+ people about remote work in 2020

A few predictions of what will happen in 2021

[ a thread ] 💻🏠🌍

🎟 Remote competition: @FrancisSuarez is the first person to wield the power of Twitter to attract remote talent

Almost every region that has something which would attract people to move there will do the same thing

Incentives for remote talent to move will grow quickly

⏰ Async-first: People now see offices are instantaneous gratification adult kids clubs where sync work makes it impossible to get stuff done

Tools that enable async work are the most important thing globally remote teams need. A lot of startups will try to tackle this

🏢 HQ Slashed: Companies of every size cut their commercial office space by 50-70%

People will work remotely 2-4 days a week, and come into the office 1-2 days a week

Companies will provide a great setup at home for their workers

🤕 Injury explosion: Companies that don't provide the right tools & equipment begin to get Sued for Millions of Dollars

This rapidly becomes a key point of differentiation between companies they use to attract & retain talent

Tantric ascetic #CompanyPainting

Bandijan or kalavant, a singer or bard from the Bhat caste. #CompanyPainting

Nat caste/tribe person with his troupe of acrobatic animals #CompanyPainting

A bear-keeper with his dancing bear.#CompanyPainting

female conjurer #CompanyPainting

Good question @allisonpearson! What did they do in China and Wuhan that has allowed them to get back to normal?

Well, they *didn't* try to infect their teenage children at university, like you said we should.

They didn't treat Covid like a lie, and *didn't* listen to people like you who said they were "pretending" that it was a lethal pandemic.

They didn't cancel lockdowns as people like you said *we* should.

They didn't tell people that you were more likely to kill your granny by not seeing her than by seeing her, like you did.

The Law of The Stretch

I had become dissatisfied with my career at that point. Having started my career in Ibadan and having lived there all my life, I felt there was more. I remember how I felt there was a void within. Outwardly, things looked okay but inwardly, I was a mess.

I knew that if I wasn’t careful, I would just settle into a comfortable zone and that may just be the end of my career. Everyone loved Ibadan- the cost of living was low and I had almost everything, at least compared to those within my immediate space.

One of the greatest mistakes you can make is to benchmark your life by those within your immediate space or circle of influence. You will think you’re making progress until you get out and see others who will challenge you. And that was what I decided to do.

I saw a vacancy for a role in Lagos and I applied. Up till then, I had never worked in Lagos- save for a few trainings, attachments and banking school.

When I got the role, it was a major stretch for me. I didn’t have a place to stay so I had to ‘squat’ with a friend for 6 months until I could pull resources together to get a studio apartment.

1 January 2021 #MAGAanalysis #HappyNewYear2021

The Forward View + A Table of Contents For Our J.E. Dyer @OptimisticCon's 10 Threads

To be sure, happiness in this New Year's moment has an even more ephemeral feeling than usual, and perhaps by a good deal. Yet it is here.

My New Years resolution is to provide more actual useful info was thinking maybe it would be shitpost less but I don’t like setting up for failure so here’s a thread on how I think about supply / demand imbalances over cycles thus far I’ve lived

1. Bitcoin is an extremely unique asset in that supply cannot react to demand in any meaningful capacity, miners can add hashrate and mine albeit slowly faster but it’s not enough to drive material supply side changes

2. This differs from a lot of commodities say oil or silver or gold or leggos as people want more of these and prices go up producers produce more they feed the ducks

3. Altcoins imo have largely been a market force driven by this issue though a lot of get rich quick and some actual innovation sprinkled but I think this is why the asset class has grown horizontally at its core

4. Either way you have periods where demand clearly crushes supply often halving related but nonetheless fucking up the imbalance and the momentum does the rest

Dear #Bitcoin & crypto tribe,

Here are some lessons from @arrington on @nakamoto which are particularly timely and poignant for we continue our good fight for crypto adoption in 2021.

This is just the beginning.

We (the Innovators and Early Adopters) laying the groundwork for the revolution probably aren't even aware of how big our ideas get.

Crypto Winter is over. Spring is coming.

/2

What is our fight?

Fiat = misery and quiet thieft via inflation
Bitcoin and crypto = freedom and happiness

This is the fight. Right now, this sounds insane to 99% of people.

/3

We can go on and on about #bitcoin and crypto and we should! But just like the Internet in 1995, remember that it will take years for smart people to the power of crypto currencies and we need to help them along the way.

/4

The way we as a "crypto community" discuss crypto on Twitter today drive away newcomers. They flee as fast as they can because of the hate, nastiness and intolerance we spread among ourselves. This is NOT ok and cannot continue.

/5

Happy new year!

Long thread.
Someone in or behind twitter gave me a "this account violated the twitter rules..." supposedly for this reply (image 1 at bottom of thread). I appealed with "A question is hate?" They upheld their decision with: "Our support team has

determined that a violation did take place, and therefore we will not overturn our decision."

To proceed I deleted / removed the reply as prompted and was informed of a temporary limit of tweets, replies, likes, etc. for 6 hours (image 2). I could still access twitter and

see content. To test the restriction, i clicked the like button on a tweet and then was immediately greeted with the limit page but it increased 11 hours (image 3). After that i was then unable to browse twitter content and was met with the same "we've limited your

account" message every time i re-loaded it or clicked "continue to twitter" (image 4, @ 1am est)

In my experience, when a construct like a clique, fraternity, employer, or another attempts to elicit an emotional reaction or accept some aimless quest to divine the actual

cause or just toil in fear of a whipping for an unkwon reason at some unkown time, it's time to look elsewhere to maintain interest as who knows when, why, what, and how it will impose next. And that experience tells me accepting such nonsense terms brings more nonsense.

The Calvin and Hobbes comic strip ended 25 years ago, so let’s celebrate a New Years treat by analyzing it! Awhile back I had a students annotate structures in every C&H strip, so we have data on the whole thing. As Calvin says: let’s go exploring! 1/ https://t.co/GAm45Ni1m5

An interesting feature of this strip is that Watterson took a few sabbaticals during its run, and came back with more artistic freedom. So, I’ll focus here on how a few aspects of the strip change over time. Here’s what every panel per strip looks like (all 14,712 panels!) 2/

Let’s start with storytelling. Overall, the strip shifts to becoming more visual and multimodality balanced in meaning over time. In this graph, higher numbers mean more meaning carried by pictures than words (0=balanced) 3/

You can also see this in the overall increase of wordless panels across strips. Interestingly, you see the same trends for both daily and Sunday strips, suggesting broader shifts in Watterson’s storytelling inclinations 4/

The amount of words also changed. The strip steadily got more wordy in the first half of its run, but then started decreasing again as it shifted to visual meanings 5/