BC LIFE
Saved by @Alex1Powell

Jeff Bezos sells me a holodeck.

Not as fully-appointed as the facilities you’ve seen on television, but the part of me that reads has never been happier in my LIFE

 But there are people who recoil at this

I am one of those people. I think it’s gross. The devil’s agreement one makes with this device is that you permit an enormous corporation an outpost in your backyard.

It skeeves me a little. I think it should skeeve anyone.
It’s in your house, it’s on your network, it’s handling your data:

A multi billion dollar company.

Hoovering up data about the things you put into your BRAIN. Explicitly. Because you want it to.

Because you need more shit for your brain. You’re hooked on feeding it now.
I put up with this revolting transhumanism—consumer cognitively parasitized by corporation—because the upsides are, well, magical.

You tell the thing what you want to read.

30 seconds later, you are reading it.
This is some Reading Rainbow ACID TRIP shit.

The convenience of summoning any book you want, at any time, even if it’s 3 AM and the book shop is closed.

No weight penalty. Nothing heavy to haul around.

The process is so painless.
But come on, you’ve seen Battlestar Galactica, you know how this ends.

We get all smug with our highly centralized, integrated information technology project. And then the complexity gets away from us.

There are consequences we didn’t anticipate.
Books is small potatoes, of course.

They’ve got gadgets that monitor your neighborhood.

They’ll sell you a security drone, now.

At some point what a company like Amazon knows about you, your neighborhood—only the most fanatical surveillance state could have fantasized about it
Amazon handles a significant chunk of digital freight, from the intellectual property itself down to the servers that host and distribute it.

Then handles the logistics of physical goods.

If you do commerce, Amazon is taking a cut somewhere down the stack.
Empires need infrastructure.

Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Google—they’re all empires

They are in the business of building roads.

And tollbooths.

And billboards.

Sometimes, when you’re not careful: colonoscopies.
In Amazon’s case, they know what I read. When I read it.

They know when my cat needs something I can’t get locally.

They know… anything they want about my IT situation at any given moment. Network configuration, IP, devices active, overlapping

God knows how much other trivia.
But they don’t just have it for me.

They have it for my neighbors.

They have it for Whole Foods shoppers.

I could draw sets and sets of people out of a hat and we’d find ways Amazon’s got them.
This is actual cyberpunk dystopian shit.

The mainstreaming of OnlyFans even makes it all horny enough that we’ll recognize it as real.

The dystopia’s all so low rent, is what’s really going to throw us off. We were promised neon holograms and instead we have Snapchat filters.
Instead of T-800 coming to us with fuckin LASER blasters and glowing-ass red eyes,

we’ve got a shitty gig economy app on a tiny fragile phone deciding, via algorithm, if someone is going to make enough money to cover food and rent for their family.

That’s some low budget shit!
All that to say.

The machines are here.

The guys who own them want to pick your pocket. Or some other party’s pocket, while on its way to deliver things to you.

All this pocket picking means we get caught in the middle.
Sidebar:

Now we’re going to talk about what an ABSOLUTE FLEX it has been, from the beginning, that the Kindle with cellular radio will work in any country without roaming fees or any particular intervention.

This is some kind of birthday gift James Bond gives his librarian.
From an information technology perspective, I can’t think of anything more imperial-magical than mastery over local telecom operators.

What an imposing flagship.
Normally, data roaming is onerous for the consumer.

You need to pay extra to your carrier, or fiddle with SIM cards for a local provider. Either way, it’s bureaucracy and cost.

Kindle, as envoy to the Amazon empire, pays all your tolls as a courtesy.
Remember, it’s pick-pockets all the way down.

Amazon covers your sporadic international cellular fees to keep the small-time pickpockets at a distance.

They want your undivided attention for their own transactions.

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@Traderknight007
FEAR - It’s the re-experience of failure in advance.

Many traders face the issue of Not entering in trades because of fear.

A thread on How to pull the trigger when the opportunity knocks.


Lets First start from knowing the cause of this "FEAR" of pulling the trigger.

A traders goes through many phases before becoming Profitable.

The first phase is the " APUN HI BHAGWAN HAI" phase-

When we first begin Trading, we don’t know any concepts, we don’t know about the risks , the dangers.

So we start trading, and like most guys by beginners luck we start making good, we start to calculate how much money we will make in next 1yr, 5 yrs, Greed start to Hop in.


We get introduced to Various instruments, F&O, LEVERAGE.

We take big positions as we don’t have any FEAR cause we haven't seen those bad phases yet.

Now we get the Big blow, account down -50%, or in many cases wiped out.

The first phase ends here.


Now we know How the market can kick our ass, we now know the risk that comes with those big positions.

"THE LEARNING PHASE"-

Now we know that we were just lucky initially and now we have to learn why we get those losses, so we start learning concepts , fundamental, Technicals.
TRADING , LIFE
Quinn Cummings
Quinn Cummings
@quinncy
Gather round, Gentle Readers. It is time I tell the story of the worst decision I ever made in an office. Some of you have heard this. Some have not. Whatever you do in your office today, this week, the rest of this year, you can console yourself by recalling this tale.

A long time ago, I was a talent agent. I worked for a woman named Susan Smith, who had her own small boutique agency. She was known for three things:

1. She had fantastic taste in clients. If there is someone you admire, odds are good that at some point, she was their agent,

2. She could negotiate a deal like few who have ever trod the earth. Casting would give her all the money they had budgeted for that part, plus a little more, plus promising to get her dog Barnaby groomed. She was magnificent to watch.

3. She was insane.

I'm sure you're thinking, "Quinn, it's the entertainment industry, they are all insane." Yes, many are. So consider this; if you told someone you worked for Susan, people who worked for insane people would look and you and whisper, "I hear she's insane."
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Kab
Kab
@Kabamur_Taygeta
#NEIOH

1. Friends Of The Great Planet Earth!

Everything You Seek Is Already Within You!  Each Waking Dream Has False Teachings That  Say There Is A Special Place 'Out There' In The Skies Where People Go That Follow A Certain Doctrine.

2. And Those Same Teachers Explain There Is A Place Of Torment For Others That Arrived On A Different Part Of The Planet And Were Taught A Different Doctrine.

There Is ONE Creator That Has Been Named By Many. It Would Be Loving To Honor And Respect Another's Beliefs,

3. As In Truth, Many Have Lived In Multiple Cultures With Many Beliefs That Now Are Judged! Incarnating Over And Over Is The Joy Of The Soul Experiencing Life! The Soul Fully Understands This Is A Human Experience.

4. Wouldn't It Be Much More Relaxing And Fun To Allow Others Their Freedom, Just As You Want Yours?  Yes Indeed!  Relax And Flow!

Since The Very Beginning Of Your Self-Awareness As An Incarnate Being, You Have Probed Your World For Clues To The Meaning Of Your Existence.

5. You Have Looked In Every Conceivable Crevice And Pondered The Vastness Of The Infinite Cosmos. You Have Scrutinized The Spiritual Wisdom That Was Forthcoming From Those Who Believed Themselves To Be Knowledgeable About Such Matters.
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Sahil Bloom
Sahil Bloom
@SahilBloom
I turned 30 recently.

While far from old and wise, I have learned a few things along the way - on life, business, writing, investing, and growth.

Here are a few important lessons learned...

Embrace Failure

Put simply, failure leads to growth.

Do not hide from failure. Seek it out. Allow yourself to be uncomfortable. Embrace it.

The most transformative moments in your life will always come from failures.

Stand on the Shoulders of Giants

As Isaac Newton famously wrote, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

You will only go as far as you can see.

Seek out mentors who champion your cause and empower you to see further.

Prioritize People

Everything in life comes down to people and relationships.

Networks compound as well as any financial investment.

Build an army that is deep and wide.

Cultivate deep relationships, but also learn to appreciate the power of weak ties.

Give > Receive

Focus on what you can do for others, not what they can do for you.

Give more than you receive.

This mentality will lead to more success and growth, but also to more fulfillment and joy.
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Luke Button
Luke Button
@iamlukebutton
This month I’m turning 22.

To celebrate, here are the 22 best threads I’ve found on Twitter this year.

Mostly about:

•Life/purpose
•Startups
•Entrepreneurs
•Writing
•Clarity of thought

If I see more interesting threads, I will add to this list.

Enjoy!

1. @ryanstephens: Need tips on growing a newsletter, mastering Twitter, writing online?

@ryanstephens breaks down a podcast discussion between @davidperell and @nathanbarry

Here’s what you can


2. @jackbutcher: How to separate your time from your income

•Explore the market
•Build equity
•Build products and services
•Scale your reputation
•Break the matrix

A fantastic thread complete with helpful


3. @AlexAndBooks_: I love to read.

Here is a great thread on 10 fantastic books.

Includes a short summary of each.

Don’t just take it from me, this is straight from the legend: @AlexAndBooks_


4. @m_franceschetti My biggest revelation in 2020 was the importance of sleep.

Here, @m_franceschetti founder of @eightsleep gives us his eight sleep hacks to improve sleep for 2021.

Do these and your productivity will
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Melissa (she/her)
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@LiteraryMouse
In regards to the #CapitolCoup, I’m in a unique position. I monitored forums ahead of time and then was present for the coup itself.

These are my observations based on what I saw and the evidence that’s been collected so far. I reserve the right to adjust my analysis as needed.

Let’s talk about the organization of the coup first. Seeing some people insist that the coup must have been highly planned and coordinated.

Yes and no. This was a #StochasticCoup. We’ll see little evidence of direct communication between Trump and the insurrectionists.

Within the insurrectionists, there was not one group that executed the storming of the Capitol.

Rather, there were a number of smaller groups working independently towards the same goal. I expect you’ll see little evidence that these various groups communicated with each other.

What you will see is detailed planning and coordination within these small groups.

Then there were the joyriders, those Trump supporters who weren’t directly involved in any plotting but who were more than happy to go along for the ride once the coup was in motion.

After four years, the insurrectionists were carefully attuned to Trump’s messaging.

Every tweet and statement of his was treated as marching orders and carefully dissected for meaning.

It’s why shutting down Trump’s Twitter account was so important.
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Anastasis
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.
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Abigail See
Abigail See
@abigail_e_see
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.
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Ryan Caldbeck
Ryan Caldbeck
@ryan_caldbeck
1/ I am seeing more and more founder secondary in venture rounds (Secondary = founders selling some of their shares before some other shareholders are able). Series B-D. I see both as an investor and through entrepreneur circles.

2/ I like secondary for entrepreneurs. Moderation is key but in a lot of situations I think it helps accelerate the co. Lots of very smart investors disagree. Here are my thoughts.

3/ Magnitude: My basic rule of thumb from what I see is market is 4+ yrs and up to 10% of founder’s equity stake with some $ cap that makes sense given stage etc. (typically <$10m)

4/ The entrepreneurial journey is brutally hard. Giving some financial relief helps remove one piece of pressure. I don’t think that secondary in the magnitude mentioned impacts the drive/persistence of great entrepreneurs.

5/ That secondary means they will be able to just sleep knowing they can pay their kids’ tuition. Secondary will make most founders better at their jobs, thus accelerating the co.
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Noah Smith
Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
1/OK, data mystery time.

This New York Times feature shows China with a Gini Index of less than 30, which would make it more equal than Canada, France, or the Netherlands. https://t.co/g3Sv6DZTDE

That's weird. Income inequality in China is legendary.

Let's check this number.

2/The New York Times cites the World Bank's recent report, "Fair Progress? Economic Mobility across Generations Around the World".

The report is available here:

3/The World Bank report has a graph in which it appears to show the same value for China's Gini - under 0.3.

The graph cites the World Development Indicators as its source for the income inequality data.


4/The World Development Indicators are available at the World Bank's website.

Here's the Gini index: https://t.co/MvylQzpX6A

It looks as if the latest estimate for China's Gini is 42.2.

That estimate is from 2012.

5/A Gini of 42.2 would put China in the same neighborhood as the U.S., whose Gini was estimated at 41 in 2013.

I can't find the <30 number anywhere. The only other estimate in the tables for China is from 2008, when it was estimated at 42.8.
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