BC POLITICS
Saved by @Mollyycolllinss

A thread…

 Thank you to @rmneiss for letting us play with the “Official Statement”generator yesterday. His @realpresssecbot was one of the primary inspirations for this account, so this is kind of a perfect bookend.
I started @TrumpEmail because I couldn't believe the tenor of the vitriol and the brazenness of the lies when Trump emails unexpectedly started showing up in my inbox. I was surprised nobody else was already putting these into the public record and took it on as a pet project.
3️⃣,6️⃣6️⃣6️⃣ emails later, it is safe to say I did NOT know what I was getting myself into.
But I’m glad I stuck with it. This felt important; a sitting president raising money in this fashion with these tactics needed a light shined on it.
One thing that really jumped out at me over the last 3 years has been the utter contempt the Trump campaign showed for its own supporters. Millions of people have been tricked into thinking Trump was their American Messiah, but only if they fork over another $5, $10, or $20.
In the midst of a pandemic and recession that *he* exacerbated, the campaign escalated its dishonest & deceitful tactics to an insane level: shaming people into fake matching programs, BS “membership” opportunities, bait-and-switch offers, etc.
Simply put: Trump’s campaign preyed on the members of his base who are hurting, angry, and easily misled. It is cruel. It is toxic. As we saw on January 6, it has serious repercussions.
I've been pondering what to do with this account since before Election Day. Surely, the Trump fundraising machine will keep duping people into giving over their hard-earned money.
The tech companies that have cut Trump off will either relent and renew access -- or the campaign will figure out workarounds. There’s too much money to be had. Somehow, some way, they’ll tap back into that supply.
However, Donald J. Trump no longer sits in the White House. That unique position of power lent these emails a lot more weight. 

He doesn’t hold that position any longer, so I’m out.
I’m leaving @TrumpEmail where it is as the unofficial Twitter archive of the Trump campaign emails from the last 3+ years. But I won’t be updating it any longer.
To learn more about the campaign’s tactics, please read my op-ed from @TheDailyBeast.
https://t.co/Bwq25ZjztD
I’ve also posted some of my tracking spreadsheets publicly. Check out my bio or the “how to” guide here: https://t.co/JQPWmIo6U4
Before I wrap this up, I want to thank the reporters who’ve cited my work over the last 3 years. I’m glad you saw the value in covering this and humbled you trusted me as a credible resource. There are too many of you to name, which blows my mind.
If you feel so inclined, follow me at @ICanFinallySay. 

Looking forward to getting my mornings back. I'm sure I’ll post about Trump and his fundraising there, but I won’t be meticulously documenting his efforts anymore. Maybe I’ll bake sourdough or create sea shanty videos.

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Handy guide for Dominic Raab and other Brexiteers, and for anyone keen to replace our EU trade with trade with the rest of the world on WTO terms...


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“Targeting” checks isn’t just bad for people, it’s bad policy too! It’s not humane, it's not smart, it’s not effective, and it’s not even fiscally responsible. Not to mention that it doesn't meet the scale of this crisis.

Help me spread the word about 4 obvious reasons why:

1⃣The survival checks often use 2019 tax data to measure someone’s income.

Millions lost their jobs in 2020 due to COVID—that’s the whole point of this relief!—and therefore their income from 1 or 2 years ago is no longer accurate. They need help now and we must provide it.

Even if someone isn’t one of the nearly 1 million additional people losing their job EVERY single week, they likely lost hours and therefore had their overall income significantly reduced.

By “targeting,” we cut out people who are desperately in need of help.

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அன்பெழில்...
@anbezhil12
#ஆதித்தியஹ்ருதயம் ஸ்தோத்திரம்
இது சூரிய குலத்தில் உதித்த இராமபிரானுக்கு தமிழ் முனிவர் அகத்தியர் உபதேசித்ததாக வால்மீகி இராமாயணத்தில் வருகிறது. ஆதித்ய ஹ்ருதயத்தைத் தினமும் ஓதினால் பெரும் பயன் பெறலாம் என மகான்களும் ஞானிகளும் காலம் காலமாகக் கூறி வருகின்றனர். ராம-ராவண யுத்தத்தை


தேவர்களுடன் சேர்ந்து பார்க்க வந்திருந்த அகத்தியர், அப்போது போரினால் களைத்து, கவலையுடன் காணப்பட்ட ராமபிரானை அணுகி, மனிதர்களிலேயே சிறந்தவனான ராமா போரில் எந்த மந்திரத்தைப் பாராயணம் செய்தால் எல்லா பகைவர்களையும் வெல்ல முடியுமோ அந்த ரகசிய மந்திரத்தை, வேதத்தில் சொல்லப்பட்டுள்ளதை உனக்கு

நான் உபதேசிக்கிறேன், கேள் என்று கூறி உபதேசித்தார். முதல் இரு சுலோகங்கள் சூழ்நிலையை விவரிக்கின்றன. மூன்றாவது சுலோகம் அகத்தியர் இராமபிரானை விளித்துக் கூறுவதாக அமைந்திருக்கிறது. நான்காவது சுலோகம் முதல் முப்பதாம் சுலோகம் வரை ஆதித்ய ஹ்ருதயம் என்னும் நூல். முப்பத்தி ஒன்றாம் சுலோகம்

இந்தத் துதியால் மகிழ்ந்த சூரியன் இராமனை வாழ்த்துவதைக் கூறுவதாக அமைந்திருக்கிறது.
ஐந்தாவது ஸ்லோகம்:
ஸர்வ மங்கள் மாங்கல்யம் ஸர்வ பாப ப்ரநாசனம்
சிந்தா சோக ப்ரசமனம் ஆயுர் வர்த்தனம் உத்தமம்
பொருள்: இந்த அதித்ய ஹ்ருதயம் என்ற துதி மங்களங்களில் சிறந்தது, பாவங்களையும் கவலைகளையும்


குழப்பங்களையும் நீக்குவது, வாழ்நாளை நீட்டிப்பது, மிகவும் சிறந்தது. இதயத்தில் வசிக்கும் பகவானுடைய அனுக்ரகத்தை அளிப்பதாகும்.
முழு ஸ்லோக லிங்க் பொருளுடன் இங்கே உள்ளது https://t.co/Q3qm1TfPmk
சூரியன் உலக இயக்கத்திற்கு மிக முக்கியமானவர். சூரிய சக்தியால்தான் ஜீவராசிகள், பயிர்கள்
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Marina Amaral
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Rio de Janeiro, 1920. 🇧🇷


São Paulo, 1910. 🇧🇷


“Arpoador”, Rio de Janeiro, 1900. 🇧🇷


“Avenida Paulista”, São Paulo, 1902. 🇧🇷


Recife, 1885. 🇧🇷
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Guillaume Chaslot
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@gchaslot
The YouTube algorithm that I helped build in 2011 still recommends the flat earth theory by the *hundreds of millions*. This investigation by @RawStory shows some of the real-life consequences of this badly designed AI.


This spring at SxSW, @SusanWojcicki promised "Wikipedia snippets" on debated videos. But they didn't put them on flat earth videos, and instead @YouTube is promoting merchandising such as "NASA lies - Never Trust a Snake". 2/


A few example of flat earth videos that were promoted by YouTube #today:
https://t.co/TumQiX2tlj 3/

https://t.co/uAORIJ5BYX 4/

https://t.co/yOGZ0pLfHG 5/
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Patrick McKenzie
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A thing which I unironically and enthusiastically believe which is unpopular among smart people of my acquaintance: financial engineering has in the recent past and present contributed substantially to human welfare. We should hope to see more of it.

Maybe more geeks need to meet someone who says “My job is teleporting value across time and space.”

Financial engineering is sort of a squishy term. I don’t primarily mean payments infrastructure or financial rails, although both of those involve substantial engineering.

I mean more “We took a thing and performed some alchemy, and now have a new thing.”

Except instead of alchemy it is generally quite a bit of math, a huge amount of contract law and due diligence, often an impressive amount of ops work, and a dusting of technology that web devs would recognize as such.
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Roger Grosse
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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.

Importantly, they don't find any evidence for a "sharp/flat optima" effect whereby better optimization leads to worse final results. They have a good discussion of experimental artifacts/confounds in past papers where such effects were reported.
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