Some thoughts on the recently announced Critical Worker Benefit. Grab a coffee☕️ #ableg cause this is going to be a thread.🧵

First, let me say that I'm glad @jkenney is finally spending the money @JustinTrudeau sent AB. Overall, this is a good thing. But I have...questions
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This is my son, Sam. He’s 5. And today he learned how shitty and harmful #ToxicMasculinity is. My rage meter is spiking right now so excuse me if this is a little raw but there are some things I want to say about BS #gender norms (a thread)

Sam is my middle child & he’s a terror. A “boy’s boy” as so many (not me) would say. He’s rough and tumble, he’s loud, he’s always dirty, loves trucks, plays sports and knee drops me from the couch. But he also loves a lot of “girl” things.

Sam has a collection of purses because he likes to carry things around. And he also loves to have his nails painted bright colors because he thinks they “look beautiful.” And he’s right – they are beautiful…

So he proudly wore his red nail polish to kindergarten this morning because Sam has absolutely no concept of nail polish only being for girls or reason to think anyone would possibly have a problem with beautiful nails.

But his classmates did have a problem. A big one. Sam was ridiculed for being a boy with nail polish. They called him names and told him to take it off. This lasted the entire day.

Beautiful story of Shri Krishna, Mata Rukmini & Satyabhama which teaches the importance of Bhakthi.
Devotion is important than anything.
#bhakthi
🕉
Satyabhama, royal princess was very proud of herself. Rukmini was very humble, her devotion was pure to Shri Krishna.

One day, Rishi Narada( Kalahapriya) arrived in Dwaraka and met Sathyabhama. In between the conversation he hinted that Krishna exhibits affection more to Rukmini than her. Worried Sathyabhama asked what can should be done to gain Krishna's undivided attention.
@SriramKannan77

Narada asked Satyabhama to make a vow, that she will hand over Krishna to him as a slave, if she cannot trade wealth equivalent to Krishna's weight. Narada thus convinces Sathyabhama that Krishna will admire her for sacrificing all her wealth for him.

Sathyabhama was sure that she have enough wealth to balance Krishna.

She went to Krishna and told about her vow to Narada. Krishna patiently listened to her and accepted the challenge. Satyabhama arranged to bring large scales to weigh and brought all her precious jewels.

Krishna patiently sat on one plate of the Scales (tula). Sathyabhama started piling up the gold, jewels on the other plate. She kept adding more and more wealth, but the pan with Krishna did not even budge. Even after keeping all her jewels the scale did not move a little

Sri Gurubhyo Namaha.

After the phenomenon called Sri Chandrasekhara Bharati came another one - Sri Abhinava Vidya Teertha [1954-1989] the 35th Jagadguru. Srinivasa was born on Nov 13, 1917. He was initiated into Sanyasa by Sri Chandrasekhara Bharati in 1931. He was Jagadguru for 35 years.

He was chosen and specifically trained to take over Peetadhipatyam from Sri Mahaswami. He is majorly responsible for the way Sringeri currently is. He built various buildings for devotees, Gajashala, Gooshala etc.

Acharya on conversions:
Once a person approached Sri Acharya that some other religions are trying to convert Hindus and requested Sri AVT to do prevent these conversions.

AVT replied - what do u mean by religion? Religion i.e. mata is related to 'mati' or intellect.
Caste is called 'jAti' which is related to janana or birth.
Ex- breed of a cow. we cannot change its qualities to resemble another breed by changing its name.

हिमालय पर्वत की एक बड़ी पवित्र गुफा थी।उस गुफा के निकट ही गंगा जी बहती थी।एक बार देवर्षि नारद विचरण करते हुए वहां आ पहुंचे।वह परम पवित्र गुफा नारद जी को अत्यंत सुहावनी लगी।वहां का मनोरम प्राकृतिक दृश्य,पर्वत,नदी और वन देख उनके हृदय में श्रीहरि विष्णु की भक्ति अत्यंत बलवती हो उठी।

और देवर्षि नारद वहीं बैठकर तपस्या में लीन हो गए।इन्द्र नारद की तपस्या से घबरा गए।उन्हें हमेशा की तरह अपना सिंहासन व स्वर्ग खोने का डर सताने लगा।इसलिए इन्द्र ने नारद की तपस्या भंग करने के लिए कामदेव को उनके पास भेज दिया।वहां पहुंच कामदेव ने अपनी माया से वसंतऋतु को उत्पन्न कर दिया।

पेड़ और पौधों पर रंग बिरंगे फूल खिल गए और कोयलें कूकने लगी,पक्षी चहकने लगे।शीतल,मंद,सुगंधित और सुहावनी हवा चलने लगी।रंभा आदि अप्सराएं नाचने लगीं ।किन्तु कामदेव की किसी भी माया का नारद पे कोई प्रभाव नहीं पड़ा।तब कामदेव को डर सताने लगा कि कहीं नारद क्रोध में आकर मुझे श्राप न देदें।

जैसे ही नारद ने अपनी आंखें खोली, उसी क्षण कामदेव ने उनसे क्षमा मांगी।नारद मुनि को तनिक भी क्रोध नहीं आया और उन्होने शीघ्र ही कामदेव को क्षमा कर दिया।कामदेव प्रसन्न होकर वहां से चले गए।कामदेव के चले जाने पर देवर्षि के मन में अहंकार आ गया कि मैने कामदेव को हरा दिया।

नारद फिर कैलाश जा पहुंचे और शिवजी को अपनी विजयगाथा सुनाई।शिव समझ गए कि नारद अहंकारी हो गए हैं और अगर ये बात विष्णु जी जान गए तो नारद के लिए अच्छा नहीं होगा।ये सोचकर शिवजी ने नारद को भगवन विष्णु को ये बात बताने के लीए मना किया। परंतु नारद जी को ये बात उचित नहीं लगी।

Can we control the output of neural generation systems?
Can we build a better chatbot using this control?
And what makes a good conversation anyway?

Check out the blog post for our NAACL paper:

https://t.co/UAAUxSeA0L

#AI #NLProc #DeepLearning #ConversationalAI @facebookai

This post got a little delayed since the paper's publication, but the intervening time has given me an opportunity to reflect.

So this post has some extra thoughts regarding more recent NLG developments - e.g., pretrained models like GPT(2), and the suitability of beam search.