Ten thoughts on today's decisions by the Facebook Oversight Board:
1. The Oversight Board is actually up and running and functional. This was not a forgone conclusion. Whatever its decisions, it is the beginning of an experiment that will affect the future of speech on line.

2.The results in these decisions are less important than the signals/precedent set for how the board will operate, how it considers its jurisdiction, what info about FB and its posts will be revealed in the decisions, and how ambitious the Board will be in checking Facebook.

3.The absence of signed opinions, the noting of minority views but not extensive dissents, the significant use of experts, the willingness to issue advisory opinions on policy – all are precedent setting as to how the Board (and public) will view its role.

4The considerable reliance on international human rights standards gives us a sense of the body of law that will govern. Not a foregone conclusion & is bound to trigger some conservative reaction in the US as int'l standards are not as speech protective as the 1st Amendment.

5.However, the fact that the Oversight Board overturned four of the five takedowns gives us a sense that it is likely to take more libertarian and speech-protective positions than Facebook.

I have a dream that one day, a leader of the world will wake up and say all the things that are logical and heal us. Since they seem to be useless, I have written the speech for them. Please retweet it if you like it: 1)

2) "Society has been in the grip of a bad disease for a long time but we must look forward. We must understand the situation in its entirety and adopt new measures based on a realistic view. One year ago, we locked down entire countries because a new, scary, invisible enemy had..

3) presented itself. We didn’t really know how to react so we were really cautious and assumed that by creating minimal exposure to each other, we could protect you.
Today, we have so much information that it is possible for us to start living our lives in an almost normal way...

4) We now know that after the terrible first wave, the virus had a weaker effect when it came back because of medical advances and some immunity. We now know that while our lockdown initially was the right thing to do, it was mainly summer that defeated the virus last year.

5) It is a very strongly seasonal virus that is triggered at certain points of the year, twice, and each wave lasts about 3 weeks.
We now know exactly which age groups and types of patients are in real danger from this virus, and we know what parts of society we can make normal..

We're LIVE for the 2nd in a 3-part series around #EquityinEducation! We are grateful to have @DrDBL & @SuptEnfield joining us today for this important conversation. Follow along in this thread ⤵️ #BringPeopeTogether #TeVirtualEvents @EquitySupt1 @KafrissenKai

starts us off with a group activity to recognize our White Privilege. Kai acknowledges that she is showing up today in her own way, and leaning into these conversations as best she can. How are you showing up today? #BringPeopleTogether #TeVirtualEvents

reminds us why we are bringing people together for this work. 90% of school district leaders in the US are white. 90% also stated that the work of #DEI is important but only 20% believe that they are equipped with the skills and talent to lead this work! #Equity

- Hope is not a strategy! For marginalized populations hope is the only thing they have to hold on to, unless leaders like us pick up this work and accelerate it. #BringPeopleTogether #DEI #Equity #EquityInEducation

tells us that when she moved to Highline public schools (diverse population) she was criticized for moving too quickly in this work. There is a sense of urgency because we are so behind and we are playing catch up! #EquityInEducation #DEI

When we think about culpability for the events of Jan 6, who to blame, and how to move forward, there are parallels to be found in the torture era in the "war on terror." And there are so many mistakes from that era that we might usefully consider today.

Obviously there are significant differences in substance, and I am not seeking to draw some specific parallel between the actors themselves, only how we approach accountability at the top and at the bottom.

During the United States' torture era, for lack of a better phrase, we had, as here, elite and highly trained lawyers, public figures, and government officials condoning, legally justifying, and calling for--in that case ordering--certain actions.

The Office of Legal Counsel within the Justice Department issued memoranda, seeking to justify the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques," in an effort to legally sanction the mistreatment of detainees and provide legal cover for those carrying it

The truth is that despite these elite lawyers' willingness to turn the law into a pretzel to justify this mistreatment, it was unlawful. It was torture. And it was a war crime.

Just finished listening to Matt Stoller's Goliath, a political and intellectual history of the anti-monopoly movement over the last ~100 years. It gave me a better understanding of the intellectual history of 20th Century anti-monopoly thinking.

In particular, Stoller draws a distinction I hadn't thought very much about previously: between liberals who favor leaving monopolies in place and regulating them strictly vs. those who oppose bigness as such.

As Stoller tells it, New Dealers erected a complicated legal system designed to tilt the playing field in favor of small companies.

For example, there were laws against discounting to prevent big retailers from using their market power to win lower prices from suppliers and undercutting small retailers. A law capped deposit interest rates to prevent big banks from outbidding small banks for deposits.

Stoller situates Teddy Roosevelt, JK Galbraith, and Ralph Nader in the camp of liberals who (mostly) favored regulating monopolies instead of breaking them up. Also Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and most modern Democratic leaders.

Woo. Indemand have delivered again.

Do I wait two weeks to open it for my birthday, or just open it now? Decisions, decisions...

I do have other robots coming...

I kind of needed a pick me up, as yesterday was a pretty bad brain day. Plus I've got the Dominus set arriving on the 9th

Ratchet's gun was a pain to get out.
Let's look at Optimus.
He is so delightfully devilish. His purple and dark blue work exceptionally well. I kind of prefer it over the original botcon toy, partially because I don't own that due it's price, partially due to the use of the

Earthrise mold to deliver a more G1SG Optimus. It very much feels like a counterpart to G1 Optimus, as opposed to the general opposite-ness we got with 2008 Shattered Glass. I enjoy that.

He comes with a matrix that looks like it glows, but it's due to only being painted on the

cw // doxing, threatening, manipulating, death threat

yesterday, an elf threatened to dox my friend and me over petty fanwar.

exposing @kyufella and in doing so—@jungkyukie too.

a thread (PLEASE READ IT FULL)

Someone recently said of the American right that its Gramscian phase had come to an end and now it was in its Sorelian phase, meaning it no longer sought hegemony over institutions but was now animated by myths and the belief in redemptive acts of violence 1/

Quick thread on why I think EDM will finish better than most models and pundits predict
1) Pundits underestimate how much playing with “meh” players can drag down even the best in the league. McDavid having “meh” help from Jan 1 on effected his results until Nuge got there (1/

Nuge w/ 97 to start will be huge for 97
2) McDavid was on a rehabbed knee all year and looked slower/tired by the last couple months. Fresh and healthy this year
3) Drai having his own line with reasonably good player in Yamamoto and Kahun gives EDM a good 2nd line. (2/

4) I project 97’s line at 55% GF and Drais at 52% GF. There ‘s ~32 5v5 minutes per game won
5) Turris wasn’t good last 2 years in NSH, but I can’t come up with any way of seeing him replicate Sheahan’s 31%(!!!!) GF% last year. JP could be good help there (3/

Turris' line penciled in at 45% GF

6) Wingers like Ennis, Neal and Chiasson will be fine if not above their level and penciled in on 4th line, they’ll be good. I got the 4th line being close to 50% GF (4/

7) EDM won’t miss Klefbom as much as feared. Jones looks like the real deal. Klef’s Achilles’ heel has been defensive and I don’t think Jones is a down grade there much if at all with quicker feet. (5/

Everybody knows the old adage “Son, this is gonna hurt me more than it’s gonna you.” Let me explain something to you people who feel the sadistic need to provoke me so that you can talk about my so called “anger issues” or anything else that you think you can find to...

“Constructively criticize” me about. Do I have your “attention” now?😊

When somebody takes a “certain type” of “shot” at “me” no matter how “subtle” you think you are “clever” enough to be, you aren’t just taking a “shot” at “me.” I’m just the one who is responsible for appropriately responding to it and/or appropriately handling it and the way...

in which I handle it can say good things about me or it can say bad things about me. There are certain people who have been on this planet for quite some time now and have “NEVER” been held “accountable” for their actions! Some of them may even be capable of being “arrogant”...

Enough to think that just because something happened maybe 8 or 10 years ago or however long ago and I haven’t mentioned it since and may have even “forgiven” them for it, it must mean that either A)I “forgot about it” or B) they are “delusional” enough to think that I....

1/n

I am working on a paper on why interest rates and yields are as low as they are. I will share some preliminary results here.

2/n

What I will share are some of the output from a simple model for US 10-year Treasury bond yields.

3/n

It is key to me that the model not only is statistically significantly, but is also economically significant. We need to understand economic developments within economic theory.

4/n

I have estimated a model for the US 10-year bond yield based on the following fundamental variables.

5/n

1) Nominal GDP growth (per capita).

A lengthy thread I wrote just to write. Feel free to ignore.

1/ The future of consumer GPUs is probably less ASICy than people think. I think we're nearing the end of growing non-general purpose compute/cache die utilization in consumer GPUs. Here's why:

2/ Real world RT core usage is far from peak theoretical perf. On Nvidia, they're cache starved. The way to improve performance for Nvidia is to add more cache to the die a la infinity cache. On AMD, it's just to improve their RT core design, which isn't great.

More importantly,

3/ real world RT core usage is very naive. It's often collect n sample per pixel with m reflections w/irradiance caching, & then run A-SVGF to denoise. This usually works well, but sucks w/moving objects, fine details like leaves on distant trees, and the combo of leaves in wind.

4/ But research already shows that you can get pretty drastic improvements w/adaptive sampling in that case.

Beyond that, adaptive sampling research usually focuses on general cases. But consumer GPUs use RT for e.g. games, Blender, etc. These aren't super general. The engines

5/ underpinning these applications have access to a lot of information. For example, developers can add hints to objects to suggest to the renderer that they be sampled more or less.

Better exploitation of temporal data and ray tracing statistics can make a lot of the rays cast

1/ How many times have u been told that ‘Imposter syndrome’ is an internal problem? That it’s your responsibility to make it go away from your mind. That it’s entirely a figment of your own imagination. Well I don’t think so, but the journey to this conclusion has been painful 🧵

2/ Let’s start with the definition of Imposter syndrome: it’s basically those feelings of inadequacy & doubt in your abilities to do the things that you’ve proved successful in doing by virtue of your achievements & qualifications. This in turn affects your confidence to do them.

3/We’re told women, particularly those from minoritised backgrounds, have this more intensely though it can affect anyone. I’ve certainly felt it throughout my life intensifying at times of stress and overload. But is it entirely internally triggered? Well, this is the narrative.

4/ You go to courses, you read articles, you speak to mentors and what they usually tell you is that it’s all in your mind. Perhaps triggered by your social upbringing & cultural background. So you must work on it. But I’ve realised recently that it’s not just that.

5/ Some people in your surroundings trigger this, to be fair to them perhaps unconsciously. They may have in their minds a stereotype of you that is inadequate & incapable of achieving what you’ve achieved in reality. So they do or say things that trigger the feeling in you..