[BIG THREAD] MeWe, the “anti-Facebook” social media platform, is overflowing with anti-vaccine content. What’s worse, administration are distinctly aware of this, but choose to do nothing. The philosophy behind MeWe’s creation is resulting in deadly misinformation.

Meet MeWe founder and CEO, Mark Weinstein. He created the platform in direct response to Facebook’s notorious exploitation of user data. He also wanted to have a space without what he calls censorship. In doing so, he opened the door to a plethora of junk science.
Defending it in a NY Post op-ed, Weinstein says, “Censorship is often counter­productive. Banning content proves to the conspiracy-minded that it must be valuable because the authorities don’t want them to see it.” To him, removing dangerous misinfo worsens the problem. Link ↓
https://t.co/i1uNcvz9Kh
Weinstein recently posted a statement on the site saying that it isn’t the job of a social media company to regulate its content beyond illegal activity. He indicated that views on health and medicine were not to be moderated, acknowledging the sizable anti-vax community.
With this all in mind, here are the consequences of Weinstein’s philosophy. Bear in mind each post taken seriously can endanger yourself and those around you.
Tries to legitimize anti-vax conspiracy through an invitation of an anti-vax doctor to Senate hearing about covid treatments. Said doctor belongs to an association that view vaccine mandates as “a violation of human rights”. Link ↓
https://t.co/Nz4pwELoUh
Attempts to use slowed covid vaccine rollout as evidence of ineffectiveness and to label the determined science behind it baseless.
Claims that covid vaccines can result in HIV.
Uses out of context article to prove testing for covid is unnecessary. This was published in August 2020. At the time, most medical experts were directly contradicting the CDC’s position.
Uses out of context article to say vaccine is unsafe because doctors are refusing it. When read, it clearly states most doctors’ reasoning is because of mistrust in government and pharmaceutical industry. They are not decrying the science itself. Link ↓
https://t.co/EVkqUq8s5C
@mewe you are endangering lives in the face of a pandemic that has killed over 400,000 Americans. In one interview, Mark Weinstein said he was calling Facebook on its BS. Well, now I’m calling you on yours. #Covid_19

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A brief analysis and comparison of the CSS for Twitter's PWA vs Twitter's legacy desktop website. The difference is dramatic and I'll touch on some reasons why.

Legacy site *downloads* ~630 KB CSS per theme and writing direction.

6,769 rules
9,252 selectors
16.7k declarations
3,370 unique declarations
44 media queries
36 unique colors
50 unique background colors
46 unique font sizes
39 unique z-indices

https://t.co/qyl4Bt1i5x


PWA *incrementally generates* ~30 KB CSS that handles all themes and writing directions.

735 rules
740 selectors
757 declarations
730 unique declarations
0 media queries
11 unique colors
32 unique background colors
15 unique font sizes
7 unique z-indices

https://t.co/w7oNG5KUkJ


The legacy site's CSS is what happens when hundreds of people directly write CSS over many years. Specificity wars, redundancy, a house of cards that can't be fixed. The result is extremely inefficient and error-prone styling that punishes users and developers.

The PWA's CSS is generated on-demand by a JS framework that manages styles and outputs "atomic CSS". The framework can enforce strict constraints and perform optimisations, which is why the CSS is so much smaller and safer. Style conflicts and unbounded CSS growth are avoided.
I think about this a lot, both in IT and civil infrastructure. It looks so trivial to “fix” from the outside. In fact, it is incredibly draining to do the entirely crushing work of real policy changes internally. It’s harder than drafting a blank page of how the world should be.


I’m at a sort of career crisis point. In my job before, three people could contain the entire complexity of a nation-wide company’s IT infrastructure in their head.

Once you move above that mark, it becomes exponentially, far and away beyond anything I dreamed, more difficult.

And I look at candidates and know-everything’s who think it’s all so easy. Or, people who think we could burn it down with no losses and start over.

God I wish I lived in that world of triviality. In moments, I find myself regretting leaving that place of self-directed autonomy.

For ten years I knew I could build something and see results that same day. Now I’m adjusting to building something in my mind in one day, and it taking a year to do the due-diligence and edge cases and documentation and familiarization and roll-out.

That’s the hard work. It’s not technical. It’s not becoming a rockstar to peers.
These people look at me and just see another self-important idiot in Security who thinks they understand the system others live. Who thinks “bad” designs were made for no reason.
Who wasn’t there.
What an amazing presentation! Loved how @ravidharamshi77 brilliantly started off with global macros & capital markets, and then gradually migrated to Indian equities, summing up his thesis for a bull market case!

@MadhusudanKela @VQIndia @sameervq

My key learnings: ⬇️⬇️⬇️


First, the BEAR case:

1. Bitcoin has surpassed all the bubbles of the last 45 years in extent that includes Gold, Nikkei, dotcom bubble.

2. Cyclically adjusted PE ratio for S&P 500 almost at 1929 (The Great Depression) peaks, at highest levels except the dotcom crisis in 2000.

3. World market cap to GDP ratio presently at 124% vs last 5 years average of 92% & last 10 years average of 85%.
US market cap to GDP nearing 200%.

4. Bitcoin (as an asset class) has moved to the 3rd place in terms of price gains in preceding 3 years before peak (900%); 1st was Tulip bubble in 17th century (rising 2200%).

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I just finished Eric Adler's The Battle of the Classics, and wanted to say something about Joel Christiansen's review linked below. I am not sure what motivates the review (I speculate a bit below), but it gives a very misleading impression of the book. 1/x


The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x

Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x

The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x

It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x