I’m quoted in this, which does about as good a job overviewing the topic as a New York Times profile can be expected to.

Major oversights in it as I see.

First, It does not acknowledge the fact that Yudkowsky is, at heart, a complete crank. This remains, to my mind, crucial to understanding the rationalist community’s influence on the world: they’re sci-fi writers being mistaken for scientists.

You can’t really understand the harmful effects of SSC until you realize that it’s part of a larger movement of bullshit artists serving as cult leaders to the techbros.

Second, and more importantly, it never really explains the harm that’s being done by Scott Siskind and his followers. It comes close, noting that “SJWs” were the only group not welcome in SSC, but it doesn’t capture the harm of that because it doesn’t unpack the term.

What is meant in practice when “SJWs” aren’t welcome in a space is that marginalized people speaking of the harm they experience are silenced.

That’s it. That’s the meaning.

1/ A thread on $APY @apyfinance. I believe this could become a major DeFi bluechip, and I’ve been waiting since the 10th Feb for the price to settle before posting this! But it just won’t. So I’ll post it now, but please go slowly if you buy it. It just did a 5x in 2 days!

2/ So the APY platform is a yield farming aggregator that uses a single pool of liquidity and automatic rebalances the portfolio among different strategies to optimise risk adjusted yield revenues. It is basically like having an automated fund manager managing your portfolio.

3/ Today, if for example, you have funds in a yearn vault and you realise another vault launched with better returns, it can cost 100’s of dollars in ETH fees to switch between them. For anyone not investing huge amounts, this makes switching strategies completely unpractical.

4/On APY, with a single deposit, users funds will be spread across multiple yield farming strategies and automatically rebalance over time to optimise risk-adjusted returns. So users won’t need to keep track & switch between strategies (+pay for fees!) to optimise yield over time

5/ The genius step here is that the $APY algorithm will track not only the strategies % yields, but also risk scores taking into account financial, liquidity or smart contract risks, so funds will be re-allocated over time in order to maximise yield but also manage risk.

Inequality requires narrative stabilizers. When you have too little and someone else has more than they can possibly use, simple logic dictates that you should take what they have.

1/

The forbearance exercised by the many when it comes to the wealth of the few isn't down to guards or laws - rather, the laws and the guards are effective because of the STORY, the story of why this is fair, even inevitable.

2/

Think of the story of monarchy and its relationship to the Church: the Church affirms that the monarch (and the aristocracy) was chosen by God ("dieu et mon droit") and the monarchy reciprocates by giving the Church moral and economic power within the kingdom.

3/

Capitalism replaced the story of divine will with a story of a self-correcting complex system: humans are born and raised with a variety of aptitudes and tastes, and at any moment, historical exigencies dictate that some individuals are better suited than others to do well.

4/

When it's railroad time, there are people who were born to oversee the laying of track and the coordination of rail networks: markets find those people, allocate capital to them, and allow them to mobilize that capital to produce shared prosperity for all of us.

5/

🤮”Former FBI director William Sessions once condemned Russia's mafia. ‘We can beat organized crime,’ he told a Moscow conference in 1997.

“Today,Sessions is a lawyer for Semyon Mogilevich..one of Russia's most powerful organized-crime figures.” @wsj 2007

“Sessions is trying to negotiate a deal with the U.S. Department of Justice for his client, who is charged with racketeering and is a key figure in a separate Justice Department probe of energy deals between Russia and Ukraine.”-@wsj 2007

“A number of notable Washington insiders are earning big fees these days by representing controversial clients from the former Soviet Union.”-@wsj 2007 archives

“From prominent businessmen—some facing criminal allegations—to top politicians, well-known ex-Soviets are lining up to hire help with criminal cases, lobbying and consulting.”-@WSJ 2007 archives

“These figures, many of whom made fortunes in the wide-open 1990s amid the Soviet Union's disintegration,hire Washington insiders to help rehabilitate their reputations in the West or to persuade investors and regulators they are committed to good corporate governance.”-@WSJ 2007

Y’all... please check on your kids, they might not be okay.

My husband and I had no clue that a major crisis was coming for our 14 year old. She was so good at faking “okay” that we were totally blindsided.

I’m apprehensive about sharing all of this, but other parents

1/15

might need to see this and talk to their kids.

To make a long story as short as possible:

On Jan 13th, I came home from work to find my 14 yr old unconscious in a pile of vomit. Thought maybe it was the flu or something at first.

I got her into a bath to clean up and

2/15

she was incoherent, slurring her speech, and not really in control of her body. I put it together and realized she was drunk.

She had never done anything like that. Ever. She then started babbling about being so lonely and wanting to go to sleep and not wake up.

3/15

My heart and stomach dropped.

We took her to the ER for alcohol poisoning and told the triage nurse what she’d been drunkenly mumbling about.

It took almost 24 hours to get her BAL back to normal, then she was transferred to a psychiatric hospital.

4/15

They kept her for 6 days, and we weren’t allowed to see her. Just one 10 minute phone call per day.

They started her on two medications for depression, anxiety, and sleep. She seems to be feeling a bit better since coming home, and now knows that she needs to talk

5/15

[Thread]What makes a hadith authentic? The basics of #HadithLiteracy

Five criteria must be met for a hadith to be classed as authentic.
1. Morally upright narrators
2. Precision in transmission
3. Connected chain
4. Free from inconsistencies with other reports
5. Solitary reports must be free from reasons for suspicion

The first three of these deal with internal defects. The remaining two deal with external (or ‘hidden’) defects. The objective of these criteria is to ensure there be no chance of forgeries and to mitigate against the likelihood of errors in reports.

1) All narrators must be morally upright and known for their honesty. This is to eliminate all chances of deliberate lies in the name of the Prophet ﷺ. A morally upright Muslim would never lie about Allah and His Messenger ﷺ.

2) Precision in transmission is likewise necessary to mitigate against unintended mistakes. An upright narrator with weak memory, for instance, might not consciously lie but is nonetheless prone to erring when conveying a report.

"these people are not going to take it any longer..
do not want to see our election victory stolen by a bold and radical left Democrats.
We will never concede.. when there's theft involved...had enough. We will not take it anymore, and that is what this is all about."
1/

"We will not let them silence your voices. We're not going to let it happen.

Not going to let it happen.

CROWD: Fight for Trump. Fight for Trump. Fight for Trump. Fight for Trump. Fight for Trump. Fight for Trump.
TRUMP: Thank you."
2/

"those tens of thousands of people ..
..the military, the Secret Service and we want to thank you and law enforcement ..you're doing a great job..
..but I would love it if they could be allowed to come up with us. Is that possible? Can you just let them, please?"
3/

"if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election.
..he has the absolute right to do it..States want to revote, the states got defrauded..they want it back. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify, and we become president"
4/

"I actually I just spoke to Mike. I said, Mike, that doesn't take courage, what takes courage is to do nothing. That takes courage, and then we are stuck .. and we have to live with that for four more years. We're just not going to let that happen. "
5/

|1| I have seen a lot of tweets emphasizing the partnership between @iotatoken and @renaultgroup. It's a great compliment for IOTAs tech, but everyone who ...

#IOTA #greentech #ElonMusk #Bitcoin

|2| is following IOTA more closely should not be surprised at all.

All the recent partnerships are probably hard to grasp for the outsiders/disappointed, but ...

|3| it is not like the management behavior is something one can not change easily. The IOTA Foundation grew through the defeats it experienced.

IOTA is ...

#Bicoin

|4| no more a realm of promises.

While the media and public judged over IOTA, they put in years of research into #coordicide

While the media and public categorized IOTA as failure (many of them to this very day), they kept fighting for ...

#research #DLT

|5| their vision and continued with their Imagination of "DLT 3.0":

--> removing the need of miners,
--> scalable,
--> feeless,
--> data/value layer,
--> governance model mitigating growing centralization,
--> ...,

#ResearchPaper #DLT #trilemma

Everyone calm down. While we don’t know why witnesses weren’t called, we know that the Democrats didn’t “cave.” They’re not hapless idiots. They’re savvy fighters, and they must have had a damn good reason for this. Stop blindly attacking them and let this play out.

For insurance, the DC Attorney General let it be known last night that he’s looking to criminally charge Trump for the insurrection. That’s infinitely more important than impeachment. Perhaps he asked the Democrats not to screw up his prosecution by calling his witnesses.

It’s also possible that one or more of the witnesses changed their story, and therefore it would have backfired.

There are all kinds of plausible explanations for what just happened. “Democrats stupidly caved” is NOT one of them, because these Democrats are NOT stupid or cavers.

We really, really, really need to learn to avoid jumping straight into the “all hope is lost” and “Democrats just stupidly caved” routines. Neither of those things ever ends up being true. When we fatalistically yell that stuff, WE are the ones (unwittingly) causing harm.

We deserve answers as to what happened today, but we’ll get them soon enough.

I warned you from day one not to let the media suck you into the fictional notion that the impeachment trial was crucial, and that he’s “getting away with it all” if he’s not convicted in it.

With the sad news that Darren Grimes is leaving Twitter to join Locals (let's be honest, he's not), I thought it the perfect time to bring back an old thread, looking back at some of his finest moments on this website...

NB: Throughout this thread it's important to understand Darren has deleted nearly everything he's ever tweeted. You might wonder why. Over the course of the next few tweets, you will see why.

1. When he rage quit the Conservative Party in 2019, cutting up his membership card before realising that wouldn't help his grift in any way whatsoever. He now pretends it never happened.

2. When he backed Donald Trump running again in 2024 following his recent election defeat. It must be pure coincidence this tweet was deleted the night of the Capitol Riots. Once again, he now pretends it never happened.

3. When he successfully predicted the Capitol Riots... but slightly misjudged the details

1/Today's Substack post is about Biden's chances of becoming a truly transformational president -- someone who will move U.S. economic policy onto a leftward track, as Reagan once moved it onto a rightward

2/Political scientist Stephen Skowronek has a theory that says we're due for a "reconstructive" President who will define a new paradigm for the next few

3/Like most people, I thought Biden would be an incrementalist centrist who would get little done other than restoring competence and morality to the executive branch (and that alone would have been plenty of reason to vote for him!).

4/When I read Skowronek's theory, I read it as a prediction of a Bernie or Warren presidency.

I did not imagine that Biden could be a transformational president.

BUT, it's looking like he just might be one!

5/Check out @mehdirhasan's rundown of Biden's rapid blitz.

It's now over half a century since 1970, and I'm starting to wonder if we should bring back its concept of gracious modern living...

You see we've grown so used to Swedish-style modernism that we've sort of forgotten that maximalism, rather than minimalism, was once the sign of a cultured abode.

The 1970s in many ways reached back to the rich ideas of Victorian decor: heavy, autumnal and cluttered. Home was meant to be a baroque and sensual experience, rather than a 'machine for living in.'

Gaudy was certainly in by 1970: colour choices for interior design were rich and varied, with every room becoming a boutique of signature design.

Experimentation and adventurism were also coming to the fore: now we had landed on the Moon surely we should start to live like astronauts on Earth.

1. For people mad at Dems. Can we try to understand how politics (not justice) works? Here are some things: the Dems simply wanted the phone call information to be added to the record. They threatened to call witnesses as a negotiation tactic - thus getting the Republicans to

2. do what the Dems originally wanted - enter the phone call on the record. If witnesses were called - the trial would have gone on for weeks - in the middle of a pandemic when relief HAS to be sent out now. And Merrick Garland has to be confirmed so the DOJ can get to work.

3. However, I WANT WITNESSES CALLED. I want them to have such explosive testimony that the whole world once again knows what it knows - that Trump is guilty. I want more Republican Senators to change their mind and vote to convict. The problem is? We would NEVER GET 17 to do so.

4. It fucking SUCKS. It SUCKS that the Democrats can't just call witnesses and make the Republican Senators appear to the world even more cowardly than they were - hearing that testimony and STILL voting to acquit. BUT that's the fantasy version where the media doesn't once again

5. start blaming Dems during this fantasy-witness-calling-trial for not getting Covid relief out, etc. The issue here is that NO MATTER WHAT - if Trump himself with Jesus back from the dead as his witness says, "I did it" the Republicans will acquit. The issue is that the GOP

You doing the academic book thing? Dope! A thread.
1. Do your homework. Sometimes the most prestigious academic press that (more) established scholars fawn over ain't meant for your research. Peep their acquisition editors, their titles, etc. Is it a fit?

2. Don't cold-submit a manuscript. Reach out to an editor. Talk about your work. Tell them where you are in the project. If y'all vibe, they'll ask to see what you got. Have it ready. Which leads to my next suggestions:

3. Don't waste your time or the editor/press' time. Bring your A game. If you are revising your diss, you need to scrap it to its bare bones starring YOU. You the authority. All that citing needs to fall back to the footnotes LOL. How are you changing/adding to the convo?

4. If you are starting from scratch - I did with Chronicling Stankonia - take some to figure out your burning question and its potential answer and learn to elevator pitch it. What you talking about? Why is it relevant? What new ground you breaking or revisiting?

5. Aight so boom you get invited to submit a proposal for peer review. Aaaaye! Your proposal is the blueprint: What's your project about? Why should it be published? Who would you be next to on the shelf? What makes you shine? Why xyz press? What is your timeline?

Ok...just spent a few looking at The Weekend’s page and it is weird AF!!! First off is this banner pic he has...take a look at it...a CLOSE LOOK AT IT....see all the ‘strange’ images he has within it? Notice the dice...all the 6’s...serpent tongue....
NOTHING TO SEE HERE.👇thread

Would you like to live in a UFO? Well in 1968 you could, thanks to Finnish architect Matti Suuronen. He created the Futuro House and for a while it was a worldwide sensation!

Let's take a look around...

The Futuro was a round prefabricated house initially designed as a ski chalet. Quick to build and easy to heat it reflected the optimism of the times.

Inside the spacious Futuro were all the 1960s mod cons: a central cooker/heater, reclining chairs, funky furniture and cool, crisp lines. Did it have shagpile carpets? Of course it did!

The Futuro was made of fibreglass- reinforced polyester and was light enough to be towed to any location. You literally moved house.

But its futuristic design caused an immediate backlash: Futuro houses were banned from many municipalities by zoning regulations because they didn't 'blend in' with the environment. Production was halted in the mid 1970s.