Texas isn't the first state Republiqans have destroyed. Does anyone remember what happened to Kansas? It wasn't a sudden disaster like this, it was a slow collapse, intentionally engineered.

This is what they do, one way or another. Any red state that hasn't collapsed yet, will.

Kansas ran an experiment in Republiqan economic theory, implementing all the tax cuts, deregulation and government service eliminations Republiqans have been pushing for. *Everything* collapsed. Duh.

This is what they do. They came this close =>||<= to doing it to America.
It still could happen to the nation as a whole, rolling through states, and then having Fascists re-seize control in Washington and implementing feudal-type monarchical disregard for everyone who isn't a Noble Lord. That's their goal.

Texas wasn't a mistake. It was a trial run.
I didn't include Flint, only because it wasn't state-wide, but Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are very close to collapse. So is Florida. And I'm sure you can all think of other red states that are on life support.
https://t.co/0N3u2M6U6R
Now, imagine what will happen when multiple red states collapse at the same time, all needing massive federal bailouts.

Imagine Republiqans control the House, Senate and White House at that time, and have neither the competence nor the desire to help.
What I describe above, of course, is the wet dream of our enemies. We cannot be conquered or destroyed from the outside. The collapse of America must come from within. But it likely is being funded and encouraged by the people who put Trump in office.
https://t.co/rviVz674kL
This ⤵️ is how they deflect blame. Remember how they blamed Obama for all the shit left over from Bush?

I have already heard rightist commentators who are suddenly shocked--shocked, I say!--by all the COVID deaths happening under Biden.
https://t.co/Xq8MkkWlk4
And as you all know, Republiqans are blaming certain Democrats and the Green New Deal (which hasn't been enacted, and would have no teeth if it did) for the collapse of Texas.

They blame Democrats for the enormous deficits Republiqans create.
A technique Trump tried, that almost worked, was to run scenes of the violence last summer, and say that was how "Biden's America" would look. Ignoring that it literally happened in Trump's America. (And was caused by white supremacists.)
We have to remain vigilant, engaged, active and informed. We have to support and vote for Democrats, at all levels of government, in =every= election. We have to register voters, get them to the polls, and defeat vote suppression tactics. Democracy depends on us.

More from All

How can we use language supervision to learn better visual representations for robotics?

Introducing Voltron: Language-Driven Representation Learning for Robotics!

Paper: https://t.co/gIsRPtSjKz
Models: https://t.co/NOB3cpATYG
Evaluation: https://t.co/aOzQu95J8z

🧵👇(1 / 12)


Videos of humans performing everyday tasks (Something-Something-v2, Ego4D) offer a rich and diverse resource for learning representations for robotic manipulation.

Yet, an underused part of these datasets are the rich, natural language annotations accompanying each video. (2/12)

The Voltron framework offers a simple way to use language supervision to shape representation learning, building off of prior work in representations for robotics like MVP (
https://t.co/Pb0mk9hb4i) and R3M (https://t.co/o2Fkc3fP0e).

The secret is *balance* (3/12)

Starting with a masked autoencoder over frames from these video clips, make a choice:

1) Condition on language and improve our ability to reconstruct the scene.

2) Generate language given the visual representation and improve our ability to describe what's happening. (4/12)

By trading off *conditioning* and *generation* we show that we can learn 1) better representations than prior methods, and 2) explicitly shape the balance of low and high-level features captured.

Why is the ability to shape this balance important? (5/12)

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"I lied about my basic beliefs in order to keep a prestigious job. Now that it will be zero-cost to me, I have a few things to say."


We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.

Harvard's discriminatory policies are becoming increasingly well known, across the political spectrum (see, e.g., the recent lawsuit on discrimination against East Asian applications.)

It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.

Harvard is being eclipsed by institutions that have different ideas about how to run a 21st Century institution. Stanford, for one; the UC system; the "public Ivys".
MDZS is laden with buddhist references. As a South Asian person, and history buff, it is so interesting to see how Buddhism, which originated from India, migrated, flourished & changed in the context of China. Here's some research (🙏🏼 @starkjeon for CN insight + citations)

1. LWJ’s sword Bichen ‘is likely an abbreviation for the term 躲避红尘 (duǒ bì hóng chén), which can be translated as such: 躲避: shunning or hiding away from 红尘 (worldly affairs; which is a buddhist teaching.) (
https://t.co/zF65W3roJe) (abbrev. TWX)

2. Sandu (三 毒), Jiang Cheng’s sword, refers to the three poisons (triviṣa) in Buddhism; desire (kāma-taṇhā), delusion (bhava-taṇhā) and hatred (vibhava-taṇhā).

These 3 poisons represent the roots of craving (tanha) and are the cause of Dukkha (suffering, pain) and thus result in rebirth.

Interesting that MXTX used this name for one of the characters who suffers, arguably, the worst of these three emotions.

3. The Qian kun purse “乾坤袋 (qián kūn dài) – can be called “Heaven and Earth” Pouch. In Buddhism, Maitreya (मैत्रेय) owns this to store items. It was believed that there was a mythical space inside the bag that could absorb the world.” (TWX)