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Richard Osman
@richardosman 5 years, 7 months ago 989 views

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It was...

In the...

Said

Won't

Nother

And then he sang a

The rare old

I turned my

And dreamed

Got on a

Came in

I've got a

This year's form

So happy

I love

I can see a

When all our dreams

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Adam Townsend
@adamscrabble

Best gif of 2020?

Maybe the best image of 2020. Kamala wearing a mask with nobody closer then 50ft of her

Best headline of 2020

Best chip of 2020

Best "that's true" of 2020

Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow

Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Mashing the Bernie meme; Know Nothings, conspiratorialism and Pastel Q; and more!

Archived at: https://t.co/cKWPSzuYHE

#Pluralistic

1/

Mashing the Bernie meme: What if every video game, except Bernie with mittens?

https://t.co/Zcs71oUras

2/

The remix culture of the early 2000s left an indelible impression on me, an enduring delight in the power of whimsy, juxtaposition, virtuosity and ingenuity - and the ability of strangers all over the world to collaborate without any explicit coordination.

1/ pic.twitter.com/hMKzmoxjLu
— Cory Doctorow #BLM (@doctorow) January 31, 2021

small robots
@smolrobots

1344) Dottobot. You have to finish this one yourselves.

Not hugely challenging, we admit.

The name is pronounced "Dot-to-bot", btw, not "Dot-oh-bot". As in a dot-to-dot puzzle.

That arm bit is really catching people out, although tbf we did mess up the shading a

Yay I drawed a robot! pic.twitter.com/y0t2StGFvl
— The Second-Breakfast Club (@motherofgpigs) January 15, 2021

The 13-14-15 arc is where the arm connects to the body.

Luke Burgis
@lukeburgis

20 insights into mimetic desire, some of which might save your life:

The fox in Aesop's fable of the sour grapes in a Romantic Liar. The only reason he was able to convince himself that the grapes were sour is that he was alone. Had there been a rival fox who wanted them, he wouldn’t have been able to walk away.

The domestication of dogs probably happened because humans used them for ritual sacrifice.

Mimetic desire leads to entropy unless directed to something transcendent. The scapegoat mechanism brings order, but it is short-lived. The only way to break the cycle is some form of renunciation—in biblical terms, death to self—the false self. 📚Thomas Merton.

The worship of cats is related to the human perception that cats don’t want the way that we do—they seem unaffected by mimetic desire. In Western philosophy, the only creature who is free, who doesn’t want for anything, is God. You see the connection.

MATT WATSON
@matthwatson

this banana is too straight

1 There's a chasm between an NLP technology that works well in the research lab and something that works for applications that real people use. This was eye-opening when I started my career, and every time I talk to an NLP engineer at @textio, it continues to strike me even now.

2 Research conditions are theoretical and/or idealized. A huge problem for so-called NLP or AI startups with highly credentialed academic founders is that they bring limited knowledge of what it takes to build real products outside the lab.

3 A product is ultimately a thing that people pay for - not just cool technology or user experience. But I’m not even talking about knowledge gaps in go-to-market work. I'm talking purely technical gaps: how you go from science project to performant + delightful user experience.

4 Most commoditized NLP packages solve well-understood problems in standard ways that sacrifice either precision or performance. In a research lab, this is not usually a hard trade-off; in general, no one is using what you make, so performance is less important than precision.

5 In software, when you’re making something for real people to use, these tradeoffs are a big deal. Especially if you’re asking those people to pay for what you’ve made (can’t get away from that pesky GTM thinking). They expect quality, which includes precision AND performance.

Shalini Singh Sengar
@Maverickmusafir

Remembering Colonel Anil Kaul, VrC (Retd) on his 3rd Death Anniversary.

“It was October 12, 1987, exactly 5:55 pm as I was… coming out of the cupola of my T-72 tank on a steamy evening in an unknown place called Kokkuvil in the Jaffna district of Northern Sri Lanka.+

I froze in that confined space at what I saw. An LTTE militant stood at 60 meters aiming his rocket-propelled gun at my tank.

In a flash he fired. Probably having lost his nerve he aimed too low. The projectile hit the left mudguard of the tank, but for some inexplicable reason+

did not explode. It then hit the side of the main gun and then exploded on top of the turret, all in a fraction of a second. Before I knew, it seemed I had received a straight right punch so to say to my chin. I saw some blood appear on my left hand and there was a sharp drop in+

my eyesight.

Lt Colonel (now Lt Gen) Dalbir Singh, then Commanding Officer of 10 Para Commando, who was standing on the engine deck said to me, “Yaar what a close shave.”

He suddenly saw me and the look on his face told me that something was very very wrong with me. In that+

fraction of a second, as if it was a rewind of my entire life, thoughts raced through my life as to how and when I had landed myself in such a situation…

I asked my gunner to pull out a first field dressing (FFD) which is standard equipment in a first aid box carried in each+

Anastasis
@OrdersofM

https://t.co/6cRR2B3jBE
Viruses and other pathogens are often studied as stand-alone entities, despite that, in nature, they mostly live in multispecies associations called biofilms—both externally and within the host.

https://t.co/FBfXhUrH5d

Microorganisms in biofilms are enclosed by an extracellular matrix that confers protection and improves survival. Previous studies have shown that viruses can secondarily colonize preexisting biofilms, and viral biofilms have also been described.

...we raise the perspective that CoVs can persistently infect bats due to their association with biofilm structures. This phenomenon potentially provides an optimal environment for nonpathogenic & well-adapted viruses to interact with the host, as well as for viral recombination.

Biofilms can also enhance virion viability in extracellular environments, such as on fomites and in aquatic sediments, allowing viral persistence and dissemination.

It was...

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