BC POLITICS
Saved by @Jacobtldr

Conservatives love to complain that everyone is against them: professors, journalists, intelligence officers, social media companies, and so on.

I used to as well until I considered that maybe having problems with everyone else isn't their fault, it's yours.

 I was reminded of that realization when I read this important NYT article about how Facebook keeps weakening news source quality controls because conservative content gets disproportionately effected by them. https://t.co/sgV5WCD4wh
Unfortunately, this great piece of reporting by @MikeIsaac, @sheeraf, & @kevinroose didn't mention the greatest challenge in AI news signal processing: Humans can barely separate conservative & far-right content. Which means computers can't either.
This techno-semiotic conundrum originates from the fact that in the US, because there is no moderate conservative tradition, the gravitational center of the right is far removed from the political center.
More plainly, this means that almost all the energy and organizing on the right exists on the far right.

This is not the case on the US left where there is a strong moderate tradition capable of organization and force projection. Ask Bernie Sanders if you disbelieve.
For the past 50 years, the best way to win a Republican primary was to say that you were further to the right than the incumbent.

This dynamic has primed GOP voters to support extremists since the former extremists get to become the mainstream. First Ted Cruz, then Alex Jones.
Because of this dynamic, it means that somewhat more established outlets such as Fox News or National Review must engage with material and ideas from the far right in order to retain relevance, market share, and dollars.
This is why Fox occasionally reinforces white nationalist fears that increasing numbers of Hispanics and Asians will doom the GOP. https://t.co/oNV9xRVezN Or why every conservative magazine periodically runs screeds criticizing evolution.
As another examle of this, I have reported how in 2008 future white nationalist Richard Spencer was actually pressured into running racist material on a website he edited that was, at the time, more libertarian oriented: https://t.co/ETunOYrZR0
There are many other examples of this co-mingling of conservative and far-right within the same media outlets. I talked about several instances in a recent Twitter thread: https://t.co/v7Hx3dZAJr
For a more academic look at the right/far-right information ecosystem, I highly recommend this research paper from @JonasKaiser
and @nikkiboura. It focuses on Breitbart as a bridge for extremist content but the overall principle is shown as well: https://t.co/gkTbyplxse
The bottom line is that because there are so many rhetorical and topical intersections between extremist and conservative media, this makes it essentially impossible to devise an algorithm that would not disproportionately impact conservatives.
A similar dynamic exists between Republican politicians and fact-checking organizations. Conservatives simply cannot compute the idea that maybe GOP officials get fact-checked more because their beliefs and rhetoric are less factual.
Facebook can't publicly admit this reality because that would expose them to charges of being "biased" or "unfair." But in truth, conservative media have enormous, fundamental problems which no conservative journalist ever wants to confront. It's easier to whine about evil libs.

More from Matthew Sheffield

Matthew Sheffield
Matthew Sheffield
@mattsheffield
For the past 6 years, I & a few other journalists have been trying to get the mainstream press and political elites realize the major danger posed by the radical right. Unfortunately, moderate and liberal elites deluded themselves into thinking that conservatism wasn't a cult.

There is no secretly powerful "Republican establishment" that will fix things. There are thugs, deluded people, and there are quislings. There is no one else in the GOP. Instead of focusing on the radical right's danger, editors wanted stories about Trump tweets.

Instead of calling out the dangerous radicalism of the GOP, television debate shows and opinion pages invited the enablers of fascism to speak and write about how we all needed to give powerful insane people the benefit of the doubt.

Unlike Trump, who walled off the White House months ago into a fortress, Nancy Pelosi did not take the terrorist threat seriously enough to demand better security. She has the budget and the authority and did nothing similar. Now, fascists are on the floor of Congress.

Of course, it is Trump who bears the responsibility for this but the Capitol Police have totally disgraced themselves by not fortifying the building the way that the Secret Service did to the WH.

This is the view of numerous congressional staffers of both parties.
JOURNALISM
Matthew Sheffield
Matthew Sheffield
@mattsheffield
This Parler user explains it quite well here. Because of yet more security flaws at Parler, it's now possible for all that "free speech" to be shared and archived with the world, even if the posters tried to erase their not-at-all innocent videos and GPS data.


In slightly more technical terms, it seems as though Parler never closed some of their developer-friendly security holes (sort of the programming equivalent of game cheat codes made by devs) and as a result, their anyone with the right knowledge could have admin access.

Parler never actually deleted anything its users posted. And, stupidly, they also kept it accessible to admin users.

This meant that anyone with admin access could still download it.

Once Parler's two factor authentication feature was disabled, because it was designed for developer convenience rather than security, anyone with the knowledge could become an administrator. And that's how Parler just got owned.

People have been downloading the raw videos, photos, and text posts by the gigabyte and archiving it for later public distribution.

All that perfect, totally harmless free speech will still be searchable, even now that Amazon locked out Parler from its servers.
SOCIETY
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Matthew Sheffield
Matthew Sheffield
@mattsheffield
Thread: People love to rag on Nate Silver for his arrogance & they should, but he's merely an example of a larger issue that the web has made it easy to draw inferences from data without knowing the context in which it lives. 1/x

Alexander Pope's warning that "a little learning is a dangerous thing" has never been more true than an age in which we can obtain information about anything without being able to understand it.

Having data doesn't mean you can use it.

Western society has a very significant problem that expertise in one area is often conflated with expertise in others.

Men are the main culprit. We have been socialized to think we know more than we do. There are many studies showing this. Here's one:

Not only do men think we're smarter than we are, we also overestimate our own attractiveness:

Male overconfidence has lots of negative implications for society. The biggest is that too many men in media have amassed followings by speaking confidently about subjects they don't understand.

Nate Silver finds Donald Trump appalling, but his shtick isn't all that different.
LIFE
Matthew Sheffield
Matthew Sheffield
@mattsheffield
Thread: Rush Limbaugh and the conservative Id

On the day of his passing, it's worth doing a brief retrospective on how Rush Limbaugh's personal life almost perfectly paralleled American conservatism...

One thing that's not commonly known about Rush Limbaugh is that he began his career in sports, doing sales for the Kansas City Royals baseball team. That's significant because much of the tribalism and dumbed-down rhetoric in American TV news directly came from sports media.

Television journalism in its earliest days was a fantastic product with real investigative reporting, no filibustering live interviews, and no soundbites. This began changing in the 1970s when ABC Sports president Roone Arledge was put in charge of ABC News.

Limbaugh tried to be a conventional FM deejay but kept getting fired because his personality was too abrasive. After working with the Royals, he began a small political talk show for a Sacremento station. The Reagan repeal of the Fairness Doctrine made his show possible.

Rush Limbaugh's Sacramento show started in 1984 (he replaced Morton Downey Jr) and after 5 years, he was picked up by ABC Radio which was trying to copy some of the sensationalism that ABC News television had started. It was a perfect fit.
SOCIETY
Matthew Sheffield
Matthew Sheffield
@mattsheffield
As a former conservative activist and journalist, it has been so frustrating to see my former compatriots spreading wild and unchecked claims about "voter fraud." @jacknicas of the NYT took a deep look at claims of "dead" people in Michigan voting. Link in next tweet.

While examining claims made by right-wing activists who are not credible individuals is a thankless task which elite media editors despise, this is vital and important work in this age of fake news. Here's the link:

As the co-creator of NewsBusters, the most prominent anti-media website, I was part of a decades-long tradition of complaining about media elites being "unfair" to conservative views. There is still much to that argument, but eventually I saw that I was missing context.

What I did not realize until I began expanding my work into creating actual media and reporting institutions such as the Washington Examiner (I was the founding online editor) was that U.S. conservatives do not understand the purpose of journalism.

This became evident to me as I saw that conservative-dominated media outlets were MUCH more biased than outlets run by liberals. The latter had flaws that arose from a lack of diversities (note plural) but they operated mostly in good faith. That's not how the former operated.
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gwen frisbie-fulton
gwen frisbie-fulton
@gwen_fulton
Today in #GRAHAMNC I went to a permitted March to the Polls lead by Rev Drumwright and others. Starting at a Black AME church, Rev Drumwright started the march by asking folks what our intentions were. TO VOTE the crowd chanted. Its the last day of Early Voting in #NC.


We then marched, escorted by police, about half a mile towards the center of Graham, chanting and singing. We moved slowly, because of the many elderly folks and families with small children. Graham is a small town in #AlamanceCounty.


Alamance County is known as "No Chance Alamance" because of rampant inequality and a judicial system generally known to be hostile to Black and Brown folks, and poor white folks. We believe that we can change that at the polls this year.

As the march approached the center of Graham where a large Confederate statue is, we kneeled in rememberance of George Floyd. His neice and nephew were in the crowd.


Moments after we were done kneeling a police officer started to yell that we had to be off the street. Folks were confused because we had been escorted there and had a permit. I moved my child up onto the sidewalk. They started pepper spraying us. My child couldn't run because
POLITICS
Kanekoa
Kanekoa
@KanekoaTheGreat
*The Evidence Collection*

There is overwhelming evidence of election fraud. Therefore it is the duty of the Executive, Legislative, & Judicial branches to throw out the fraudulent votes & to honor their oath to protect & defend the Constitution of the USA.🇺🇸🦅

A list below.🔻


1/ Navarro Report: The Immaculate Deception - Six Key Dimensions of Election Irregularities -

2/ Analysis of 3,000 U.S. counties shows Joe Biden received 5.6 % more votes in counties using Dominion Voting Systems (Video) -

3/ Antrim Michigan Dominion Voting Systems Forensics Report -

4/ Evidence Grows: ’20 Election Was Rigged -
POLITICS , ALL
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Stephen Bush
Stephen Bush
@stephenkb
Some quick thoughts on Sam Gyimah's resignation after conversations with various Conservative MPs: 1) the chances of a second referendum are a lot higher than I thought:

2) At this point, if you are a young and ambitious Tory MP it is now so overwhelmingly in your interest to vote against the withdrawal agreement. V v hard to see how Julian Smith can cap rebellion at under 100:

3) Really just to reiterate 1) Gyimah is the kind of "No, never gonna rebel" vaguely pro-EU Tory you'd need to get on side to outweigh Labour Leavers and Real Concerners.
POLITICS
Parker Molloy
Parker Molloy
@ParkerMolloy
I told you they’d bring this up


I was wondering why that tweet had so many stupid replies. And now I see


Seriously, this was “the night before.” If you’re at the march where they’re changing “Jews will not replace us” and “Blood and soil,” you’re not a “very fine person.” Full stop.


There are 3 important moments in that transcript.

1.) When someone asked Trump about a statement *he had already made* about there being blame on “both sides,” he said the “fine people” line.


2. Trump does clarify! “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and white nationalists — because they should be condemned totally “

Okay!

Then adds that there were “many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists.”
POLITICS
Sharjeel Usmani
Sharjeel Usmani
@SharjeelUsmani
Thread on elections:

1) Only CPIM can compete with BJP in hypocrisy and shamelessness. I mean they are calling the opposition coalition (Muslim League + Congress) communal in Kerala, equating Muslim League with RSS and subtly consolidating Hindus using Islamophobic

2) campaigns while in West Bengal they're themselves in alliance with Congress and a Muslim party ISF, founded by an Islamic cleric. In West Bengal they are appealing on the lines of social justice, Dalit emancipation and Muslim empowerment.

3) Their candidates in Bengal, most of whom would distance themselves from anybody visibly Muslim and would leave no chance to demonize them, are now flaunting pictures with Muslim men and women covered in skullcaps and Hijab. In Kerala, they once disowned their own party leader

4) because he performed Umrah. Meanwhile, their PR agency called NewsClick is publishing pieces suggesting how TMC's violence helped BJP make inroads in Bengal while ignoring that it was CPIM's vote that shifted to BJP and hence it should be them who should be called out for not

5) being able to keep their votes intact. I am not in support of Mamata in Bengal or Congress in Kerala. I only hope and wish ISF, IUML, SDPI, AIMIM, AIUDF, Welfare Party and other Muslim outfits win as many seats as there are! #ApniQayadat

End.
POLITICS

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Nano Course On Python For Trading
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Module 1

Python makes it very easy to analyze and visualize time series data when you’re a beginner. It's easier when you don't have to install python on your PC (that's why it's a nano course, you'll learn python...

... on the go). You will not be required to install python in your PC but you will be using an amazing python editor, Google Colab Visit https://t.co/EZt0agsdlV

This course is for anyone out there who is confused, frustrated, and just wants this python/finance thing to work!

In Module 1 of this Nano course, we will learn about :

# Using Google Colab
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# Using Google Colab

Intro link is here on YT: https://t.co/MqMSDBaQri

Create a new Notebook at https://t.co/EZt0agsdlV and name it AnythingOfYourChoice.ipynb

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You can add code in these cells and add as many cells as you want

# Importing Libraries

Imports are pretty standard, with a few exceptions.
For the most part, you can import your libraries by running the import.
Type this in the first cell you see. You need not worry about what each of these does, we will understand it later.
PYTHON , TRADE PYTHON , PYTHON TRADING
Vibhu Vashisth
Vibhu Vashisth
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शमशान में जब महर्षि दधीचि के मांसपिंड का दाह संस्कार हो रहा था तो उनकी पत्नी अपने पति का वियोग सहन नहीं कर पायी और पास में ही स्थित विशाल पीपल वृक्ष के कोटर में अपने तीन वर्ष के बालक को रख के स्वयं चिता पे बैठ कर सती हो गयी ।इस प्रकार ऋषी दधीचि और उनकी पत्नी की मुक्ति हो गयी।


परन्तु पीपल के कोटर में रखा बालक भूख प्यास से तड़पने लगा। जब कुछ नहीं मिला तो वो कोटर में पड़े पीपल के गोदों (फल) को खाकर बड़ा होने लगा। कालान्तर में पीपल के फलों और पत्तों को खाकर बालक का जीवन किसी प्रकार सुरक्षित रहा।

एक दिन देवर्षि नारद वहां से गुजर रहे थे ।नारद ने पीपल के कोटर में बालक को देख कर उसका परिचय मांगा -
नारद बोले - बालक तुम कौन हो?
बालक - यही तो मैं भी जानना चहता हूँ ।
नारद - तुम्हारे जनक कौन हैं?
बालक - यही तो मैं भी जानना चाहता हूँ ।

तब नारद ने आँखें बन्द कर ध्यान लगाया ।


तत्पश्चात आश्चर्यचकित हो कर बालक को बताया कि 'हे बालक! तुम महान दानी महर्षि दधीचि के पुत्र हो । तुम्हारे पिता की अस्थियों का वज्रास्त्र बनाकर ही देवताओं ने असुरों पर विजय पायी थी।तुम्हारे पिता की मृत्यु मात्र 31 वर्ष की वय में ही हो गयी थी'।

बालक - मेरे पिता की अकाल मृत्यु का क्या कारण था?
नारद - तुम्हारे पिता पर शनिदेव की महादशा थी।
बालक - मेरे उपर आयी विपत्ति का कारण क्या था?
नारद - शनिदेव की महादशा।
इतना बताकर देवर्षि नारद ने पीपल के पत्तों और गोदों को खाकर बड़े हुए उस बालक का नाम पिप्पलाद रखा और उसे दीक्षित किया।
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Anu Satheesh \U0001f1ee\U0001f1f3
Anu Satheesh 🇮🇳...
@AnuSatheesh5
Cherthala Karthyayani Kshetram
#Alappuzha, Kerala
#KeralaTemples 🚩

Cherthala Karthyayani Temple Prathishta was done by Vilwamangalam Swamy. Chertala Pooram is very famous. Devi is Mangalya Dayini here removes obstacles relating to marriages. Sthala Puranam says that, once 👇


Vilwamangalam Swamiyar was passing this area after Prathista of Padmananbhaswamy Temple, he felt Devi chaitanyam and recognized as Karthyayani Devi. But Devi seeing Vilwamangalam went inside the pond. Swamy searched for Devi continously for 6 days and on 7th day Vilwamangalam


got hold of Devi's hair. Thus only Devi's head is Prathishta here. Devotees do Kozhi parathal ( offering cock) here as an offering to Karthyayani Devi.

Karthyayaniamme Sharanam
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Best resort on the Ganga at Rishikesh
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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.

So I set about it.

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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