BC GOVERNMENT
Saved by @ThomassRichards

Bad news. The day before yesterday, we had confirmation of 3 new variants of concern in the US. As of yesterday, we now have 4. Three of the 4 variants have just been confirmed in the last month. The new one yesterday is the South African variant.

What does this mean for

 Americans?
1. If you have been lucky and been able to get away with being in gatherings and not wearing a mask up until now, your luck is about to run out. It’s time to take the public health guidance seriously and don’t get in large gatherings, especially indoors, and you need
to wear a mask.
2. We need to slow down the transmission of this virus or we are going to get yet more variants. I have fought against the suggestions by some that we should lock up the elderly & high risk individuals at home & then let everyone get back to normal and spread the
virus to get herd immunity for a year. It is a dangerous proposal and the proliferation of new variants is a consequence.
3. We need to get as many people vaccinated as soon as possible.
4. There are discussions that since schools have operated safely in the past (by and large,
they have), we should now bring students back for full in-person classes. This is a mistake for several reasons. First, our data that these decisions and the recent CDC report were based on was with the majority of schools in hybrid. The first rule of interpreting scientific
studies is that you can’t take the findings of one study under certain conditions and then say based on that we can expect the same results under completely different conditions. Full in-person classes will reduce distancing below the recommendation of any public health
organization in the world. Further, that data was based on the transmission characteristics of the D614 and D614G variants. The CDC predicts that in March, the B.1.1.7 variant will be dominant. Does that matter? Yes, we only have to look at the U.K. Though it is early and we
haven’t had the opportunity to study this new variant to the degree we would like, the U.K. Is telling us that distancing is even more important than with the prior strains. This is not the time for American schools to cut distancing in half. Further, the transmission
characteristics appear to be significantly different and there is some evidence that while previously schools did not contribute to community spread, with B.1.1.7, they may very well do so.

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\U0001f525Donald Trumpet\U0001f525
🔥Donald Trumpet🔥...
@FROGTrumpet
Declassified:
SELECT COMMITTEE re:ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT
JOHN F. KENNEDY
DALLAS, TX., NOVEMBER 22, 1963

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the fourth victim of Presidential
assassination, preceded by Abraham Lincoln in 1865, James A. Garfield in 1881, and William McKinley in 1901


1. President Kennedy was struck by two rifle shots fired from
behind him.

2.The shots that struck President Kennedy from behind him
were fired
GOVERNMENT
Dr Duncan Robertson
Dr Duncan Robertson
@Dr_D_Robertson
The Government is making the same mistakes as it did in the first wave. Except with knowledge.

A thread.


The Government's strategy at the beginning of the pandemic was to 'cocoon' the vulnerable (e.g. those in care homes). This was a 'herd immunity' strategy. This interview is from


This strategy failed. It is impossible to 'cocoon' the vulnerable, as Covid is passed from younger people to older, more vulnerable people.

We can see this playing out through heatmaps. e.g. these heatmaps from the second


The Government then decided to change its strategy to 'preventing a second wave that overwhelms the NHS'. This was announced on 8 June in Parliament.

This is not the same as 'preventing a second wave'.

https://t.co/DPWiJbCKRm


The Academy of Medical Scientists published a report on 14 July 'Preparing for a Challenging Winter' commissioned by the Chief Scientific Adviser that set out what needed to be done in order to prevent a catastrophe over the winter
GOVERNMENT
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\U0001f1fa\U0001f1f8I Support Our Military & Law Enforcement\U0001f1fa\U0001f1f8
🇺🇸I Support Our Milita...
@TheWiseOwl_AZ
1. Military Intelligence contact continued:

. There were 300 arrests that took place yesterday Fri 11 Dec--that was one of the last pieces that needed to be put in place for the final release of the RV shotgun start--and that leads to the Insurrection Act possibly being...

2. ...invoked by POTUS (for military suppression of Deep State riots fomented by Antifa thugs), that leads to martial law (if necessary when people realize the vote fraud NEGATES A BIDEN PRESIDENCY & the Deep State tries to start RIOTS IN 18+ URBAN HOT SPOTS AROUND THE COUNTRY...

3. ... that have already been prepared with initial arrests and round-ups by Spec Op (SOF) military missions (black hawks carrying them);
. ALL THESE THINGS are TIED to NESARA / GESARA, to the restored Republic being organizationally and legally in place by Mon 21 Dec...

4. ... (POTUS TEAM'S LEGAL DEADLINE to get it done), and to COMMON LAW or CONSTITUTIONAL LAW (your post-RV CONSTITUTIONAL FREEDOM and your post-RV FINANCIAL FREEDOM to spend the money as YOU INTEND and NOT AS THE DEEP STATE GOVT wants to do to LOCK YOU DOWN, TAX 50%-70% of...

5. ... your post-RV funds, and to LIMIT YOU under DRACONIAN ECONOMIC LOCKDOWNS and SCAMDEMIC LOCKDOWNS while FORCING COVID-19 VACCINE MANDATES on you AGAINST YOUR WILL and against YOUR CONSTITUTIONAL & GENEVA CONVENTION RIGHTS >>NOT<< to HAVE TO TAKE A VACCINE--Trump will NOT...
GOVERNMENT
Ag Competitiveness \U0001f1fa\U0001f1f8
Ag Competitiveness 🇺🇸...
@CompetitiveAg
OK. I have seen a lot of attempted dunking on Texas...red state bad, bad government, etc...because of the electricity issue in this record cold. So, I am going to do a thread here. I am no engineer, but I want to point out some obvious facts. 1/n

This is a natural disaster of large proportions. At no time in recorded have this many Texas counties been below freezing for so long...ever. We are prepared for short stints, not an ice age. It snowed on Galveston island and much of the state is covered in snow and ice.

This chart shows electricity production since Feb 4. Note the large share from wind prior to the cold snap. Texas typically does not use as much electricity in winter, so gas plants are typically offline and have smaller reserves of gas.


But as the cold hit, renewable production fell by as much as 93%. Gas plants fired up and easily met the ERCOT stress test levels initially, but electricity quantity demanded was rising, so was gas for heating. Eventually, there were shortages of gas that led to a drop in prod.

Why shortages? Because gas producers were contractually obligated to export gas all the while residential heating demand was rising as well...hence Gov Abbot's order. It provides more cover for force majeure contract breakage.
GOVERNMENT
(((EugeneFreedman)))
(((EugeneFreedman)))
@EugeneFreedman
This NYT interview with Dr. Fauci blows the biggest hole possible in @Ken_Rosenthal's reporting from 10 days ago.

In his article, @Ken_Rosenthal wrote, "The union, by scheduling its own discussion with the same officials for a later date, avoided hearing what the government representatives suggested to MLB, according to sources: a one-month delay, with the idea of getting players..." 2/

"in time to start the season."

Within a day or two the Union had its own meeting with government officials. That was already reported, although perhaps not as widely as the original pieces claiming the Union didn't want to talk to government officials. In a previous thread 3/

I explained that the Union did not want to be on the same call with management because it would lead to the parties posturing on the call, rather than having an honest discussion with the experts, including Fauci. The Union never avoided the discussion, it just wanted 4/

a separate discussion, not a negotiation in front of COVID experts.

But, this interview undermines the original reporting further.

Fauci told the NYT:

The only thing I said was that, from a public health standpoint, it looks like the cases — if you look at the plotting of 5/
GOVERNMENT

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Tinker \u274e
Tinker ❎
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Singing the Blues:
Taking Down an Insider Threat

"I had all of the advantages. I was already inside the network. No one suspected me. But they found my hack, kicked me off the network...

...and physically hunted me down."


Many pentests start from the outside, wanting to see how the perimeter might be breached.

This pentest started from the inside. My client wanted to assume they had already been breached, and, if breached, how far could an attacker go.

Could they stop me once I was inside?

So they snuck me in. Disguised me as a new employee. Gave me a work computer, an ID badge, an account in their system... hell, I even had a cubicle w/my assumed name on it.

The only person who knew who I really was was their CISO. Everyone else thought I was Jeremy in Marketing.

During most of the first morning, I completed onboarding, made introductions, and completed menial tasks.

But I had to act quick. I only had a week onsite. I had to hack their network while not raising suspicion.

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You have to understand... most "Internal Pentests" are straight forward. The hard part is breaching the network, but once you're inside, it's a target rich environment. End of Life computers, default passwords, everyone a Local Administrator...
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Important paper from Google on large batch optimization. They do impressively careful experiments measuring # iterations needed to achieve target validation error at various batch sizes. The main "surprise" is the lack of surprises. [thread]

https://t.co/7QIx5CFdfJ


The paper is a good example of lots of elements of good experimental design. They validate their metric by showing lots of variants give consistent results. They tune hyperparamters separately for each condition, check that optimum isn't at the endpoints, and measure sensitivity.

They have separate experiments where the hold fixed # iterations and # epochs, which (as they explain) measure very different things. They avoid confounds, such as batch norm's artificial dependence between batch size and regularization strength.

When the experiments are done carefully enough, the results are remarkably consistent between different datasets and architectures. Qualitatively, MNIST behaves just like ImageNet.

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