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
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
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
Advertisement
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
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
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.
ALL

More from Politics

Palmer Report
Palmer Report
@PalmerReport
That new attack piece about Seth Abramson is full of easily debunked false claims. Whenever the mainstream media gets annoyed at an indie pundit like Seth, it just publishes a bunch of bullshit about him, and most people mistakenly believe it. They've done the same thing to me.

The sad part is that when the author of that piece tried to smear a bunch of mainstream media journalists for daring to compare notes with him, they all responded by lying and said they've never compared notes with him. Even though Abramson has proof that they have.

This is the EXACT same strategy that certain mainstream media outlets used against me in 2017-2018. First they lied about me. Then they attacked my mainstream media associates for associating with a "fake news" pundit like me. Then some in the media felt compelled to disown me.

Sadly, it didn't matter that I had overwhelming proof that everything said about me in those attack pieces was false. When you defend yourself, no matter how factually, the average observer merely decides you're being "defensive" and therefore guilty as charged.

Ask yourself why the mainstream media is choosing now to dishonestly attack Abramson. The media's ratings are way down now that Trump is gone. Abramson presumably still has his entire niche audience intact. So the media gets jealous and takes it out on him.
POLITICS
David Rothkopf
David Rothkopf
@djrothkopf
Pretending that voting for Trump or denying climate change or suggesting the solution to every problem is more guns is a legitimate point of view, worthy of respect is not "how America works." It is how it dies.

People in a free society are entitled to any point of view no matter how obviously wrong or outlandish or destructive provided they do not impose their views on others.

But suggesting that something ignorant or divorced from reality warrants the same kind of treatment in public debate as something based in fact or at least credible is absurd and when done on behalf of a society in public media or academic settings it is self-destructive.

We would not grant media coverage or much bandwidth at all to a group that argued that unicorns exist or that there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Yet views like denying climate change or basing policy decisions on sweeping, obvious lies, are just as unsound.

Somewhere, somehow, judgments must be made. Some behaviors are wrong and must be condemned. Someone must challenge lies and demand facts. Coddling people who embrace idiocies does not help them no matter how loudly they demand to be coddled.
POLITICS
Advertisement
Brian Cates
Brian Cates
@drawandstrike
A lot of people don't understand that Trump & his incoming team didn't face a normal transition period, like it was over a in a matter of a few weeks or months.

The DOJ transition period JUST ENDED when Sessions left. Almost 2 exact years to get it there.

Pompeo at the CIA took over a year before he was done and ready to shift over to the State Department.

All kinds of stuff has been going on behind the scenes nobody leaks or talks about.

We only had the barest mention of the fact the Clinton Email investigation restarted

Nobody leaked in a year that Huber was deep diving into the Clinton Foundation.
Keep that in mind as all the usual suspects continue to INSIST nothing is happening/going to happen.
POLITICS
Jennifer Taub
Jennifer Taub
@jentaub
✔️ We have begun. It's Day 4 of the Trump Impeachment Trial 2.0. The defense is putting on their case. The first lawyer is Van Der Veen.

1/


Already this is wackadoodle. Seems like the defense is trying to tell us not to believe what we saw. This lawyer has the audacity to say that the people assembled at Trump's speech were peaceful patriots

2/

This lawyer is claiming that Trump's speech on the ellipse on January 6th was was a policy speech about "turning out strong in the next primaries" and how this was about working on voting law reform.

A mere civics lesson.

3/

The lawyer is lying. The Clinton campaign never "declared that the election was stolen by Russia."

Also, this Trump lawyer is trying to claim that democrats objecting to some of the electoral votes is equivalent to Trump's incitement of violence.

4/

As we expected, Trump's lawyers are not going to address the merits. Instead this is what-about-ism

5/
POLITICS
Mohammed Zubair
Mohammed Zubair
@zoo_bear
Several Hindutva supporters, BJP members, Far RW propaganda websites and a few prominent handles (Journalists, Singers etc) were supporting this hate monger Mahant Yati Narasimhanand Saraswati. Let me share a few things he said about, The Missile Man of India, Dr. Abdul Kalam. 👇

This hate Monger claims, Dr. Abdul Kalam had a huge role in making Atom bomb for Pakistan.


He claims, The person who you (Hindus) chose as your role model, He (Dr, Abdul Kalam) was one of the biggest Jihadi India has ever produced. One of the biggest...


He further vomits, 'When Abdul Kalam visited USA, He was stripped naked. When Dr. Manmohan & Sonia G Objected, USA sent 124 files & said, He might be a Scientist to U, but according to our files, He is a terrorist, guardian of Pakistan & Father of Pakistan's Atom bomb'


He says, 'Anyone can recite a few slokhs of Gita & fool u.. Not once did Abdul Kalam miss Namaz. Yes, He was a vegetarian, But if he hadn't been a Vegitarian, How would've he got a Padam bhushan or Bharat Ratna. How would have he fooled you & made a Atom bomb for Pakistan..."
POLITICS

You May Also Like

Pat Walls
Pat Walls
@thepatwalls
And here they are...

THE WINNERS OF THE 24 HOUR STARTUP CHALLENGE

Remember, this money is just fun. If you launched a product (or even attempted a launch) - you did something worth MUCH more than $1,000.

#24hrstartup

The winners 👇

#10

Lattes For Change - Skip a latte and save a life.

https://t.co/M75RAirZzs

@frantzfries built a platform where you can see how skipping your morning latte could do for the world.

A great product for a great cause.

Congrats Chris on winning $250!


#9

Instaland - Create amazing landing pages for your followers.

https://t.co/5KkveJTAsy

A team project! @bpmct and @BaileyPumfleet built a tool for social media influencers to create simple "swipe up" landing pages for followers.

Really impressive for 24 hours. Congrats!


#8

SayHenlo - Chat without distractions

https://t.co/og0B7gmkW6

Built by @DaltonEdwards, it's a platform for combatting conversation overload. This product was also coded exclusively from an iPad 😲

Dalton is a beast. I'm so excited he placed in the top 10.


#7

CoderStory - Learn to code from developers across the globe!

https://t.co/86Ay6nF4AY

Built by @jesswallaceuk, the project is focused on highlighting the experience of developers and people learning to code.

I wish this existed when I learned to code! Congrats on $250!!
MAKERS
Damodar Hegde
Damodar Hegde
@DamodarHegde4
MUST READ TILL END:
FB POST BY MR PRABEER BASU,
IAS-1976(BIHAR)
" Received a hurtful post from an old friend and colleague. He was on my daily Broadcast list of WhatsApp. He requested that I do not send him any of my posts on 'political' issues. I gave him a long explaination
>2

2/29
on why I write and what I write. But he was not convinced.

Being alerted by him thus, I felt I should clarify to all who read my posts on what exactly I think and do.

The charge against me is that I wrongly support our current Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi..
>3

3/29
and that it establishes I am not rational and impartial anymore.
Let me try and explain.First and foremost,I do not write on 'political' issues. I write on 'national' issues. For example, I have no opinion on whether Rahul Gandhi should be President of his party or not.
>4

4/29

Similarly, I have no views whether BJP is a better party than Congress or vice versa.
Even after 36 years in the IAS I have no MLA, MP or anyone involved in politics whom I can classify as my friend or even acquaintance.
>5

5/29
So, naturally I don't care which party wins or loses as long as the winning party runs an honest government doing good to my nation.
Now, why I speak in favour of Shri Modi:

1. Ever since the beginning of my service I realised that Planning Commission was not serving..

>6
INDIA
Advertisement
itrade(DJ)
itrade(DJ)
@ITRADE191
Here is the detailed information of about strategy,

Entry time : 9.30 - 10
Exit : Upto you

Strategy :
Sell weekly ATM CE & PE at almost equal price
For ex : Sell Nifty 17250 CE at 50 and Nifty 17250 PE at 48 so it will become short straddle

Buy monthly ATM or near ATM CE & PE at matching price (5-10 points diff should be fine) as hedge
For ex : Buy Nifty 17250 CE at 150 and Nifty 17300 PE at 155 so it will become long straddle.

Weekly Short straddle + Monthly Long straddle

Adjustment:

• If you feel slightly bullish/bearish then no adjustment needed
• If Nifty moves 50 up or down and sustain then just simply roll up or down half of qnty and keep rest of the quantity. If market goes up or down further then roll up or down rest.

• If Nifty moves one side or about to breach BEP then add equal amount of lot. This can balance tested side. For ex: If I bought 17300 CE 4 lot as hedge then add 4 lot so you will have only one side risk . Note: Remember to keep SL at cost price (only for additional lot bought)

Capital requirement:
2.2 L for 4 lot
Adjustment requires additional capital upto 1L

Note : High risk high reward strategy, please don’t execute until you fully understand. Kindly do paper trading or backtest.
RR : 1:1
POP : 45-55%
OPTIONSLEARNINGS , ALL
Aditya Todmal
Aditya Todmal
@AdityaTodmal
MASTER THREAD on Short Strangles.

Curated the best tweets from the best traders who are exceptional at managing strangles.

• Positional Strangles
• Intraday Strangles
• Position Sizing
• How to do Adjustments
• Plenty of Examples
• When to avoid
• Exit Criteria

How to sell Strangles in weekly expiry as explained by boss himself. @Mitesh_Engr

• When to sell
• How to do Adjustments
• Exit


Beautiful explanation on positional option selling by @Mitesh_Engr
Sir on how to sell low premium strangles yourself without paying anyone. This is a free mini course in


1st Live example of managing a strangle by Mitesh Sir. @Mitesh_Engr

• Sold Strangles 20% cap used
• Added 20% cap more when in profit
• Booked profitable leg and rolled up
• Kept rolling up profitable leg
• Booked loss in calls
• Sold only


2nd example by @Mitesh_Engr Sir on converting a directional trade into strangles. Option Sellers can use this for consistent profit.

• Identified a reversal and sold puts

• Puts decayed a lot

• When achieved 2% profit through puts then sold
OPTIONSLEARNINGS , ALL , OPTIONS STRATEGY
Enigma
Enigma
@ainittomai
On December 25 Mr Pool retweeted August 16 message about the Phoenix and that the worst was still on the horizon to come. 1/*


Maybe now we can assume that November 3 message meant "FUD" nor "FUN". Putting the word in capital letters seems to indicate the aspect the word fud has in our space, FUD. 2/*


Brad started it on December 22 (1/3 posts (Don't say? Sure) = 13 = Plan B). 3/*


And immediately the SEC followed dropping the bomb (1.3 billions (Don't say? Sure) = 13 = Plan B). 4/*


FUD materializes, Bitstamp is one of the first that haltes XRP trading and so on. 5/*
FOR LATER READ