Ok, I’ve told this story a few times, but maybe never here. Here we go. 🧵👇

I was about 6. I was in the car with my mother. We were driving a few hours from home to go to Orlando. My parents were letting me audition for a tv show. It would end up being my first job. I was very excited. But, in the meantime we drove and listened to Rush’s show.
There was some sort of trivia question they posed to the audience. I don’t remember what the riddle was, but I remember I knew the answer right away. It was phrased in this way that was somehow just simpler to see from a kid’s perspective. The answer was CAROUSEL. I was elated.
My mother was THRILLED. She insisted that we call Into the show using her “for emergencies only” giant cell phone. It was this phone:
I called in. The phone rang for a while, but someone answered. It was an impatient-sounding dude. The screener. I said I had the trivia answer. He wasn’t charmed, I could hear him rolling his eyes. He asked me what it was. I told him. “Please hold.”
After a few minutes, I was taken off hold. Rush picked up and told me I was on the air. He asked me what the answer was. I told him. He asked me how I knew the answer. I told him the truth... that I just... did? He started to goad me.
This is the first time I can ever remember this happening, btw. It was very confusing. “Come on, your mind told you the answer.” “No! She didn’t even know it!” I told him. He stays on this bit for a minute, then he switches gears.
“What are you doing out of school?” He asks. I’m excited to say why! “I’m auditioning for a tv show!”

This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have told him this.
He asks to speak to my mother.
At this point, my eyes kind of start to glaze over. I realize this guy is going to give my mom a hard time for letting me do this, and I probably should’ve kept my mouth shut about the trivia answer.

He’s now berating her for being a psycho parent.
After she speaks with him for a few incredibly uncomfortable few minutes, we get off the phone.
But the show has changed course.
They’re talking about me and my mom. And then in general about how insane it is to let your kids have hobbies like acting or whatever. I
It was incredibly surreal. We kept listening in silence. The whole show was now about this topic.
I don’t think we ever even spoke about it.
Anyway, maybe he was right. My mom was kind of a psycho parent, and maybe I shouldn’t have been an actor?
So, RIP Rush. Thanks for the good story. You’ll always be the first grown man I remember gaslighting me for being smart. 🥰

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THREAD: How is it possible to train a well-performing, advanced Computer Vision model 𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗣𝗨? 🤔

At the heart of this lies the most important technique in modern deep learning - transfer learning.

Let's analyze how it


2/ For starters, let's look at what a neural network (NN for short) does.

An NN is like a stack of pancakes, with computation flowing up when we make predictions.

How does it all work?


3/ We show an image to our model.

An image is a collection of pixels. Each pixel is just a bunch of numbers describing its color.

Here is what it might look like for a black and white image


4/ The picture goes into the layer at the bottom.

Each layer performs computation on the image, transforming it and passing it upwards.


5/ By the time the image reaches the uppermost layer, it has been transformed to the point that it now consists of two numbers only.

The outputs of a layer are called activations, and the outputs of the last layer have a special meaning... they are the predictions!

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So the cryptocurrency industry has basically two products, one which is relatively benign and doesn't have product market fit, and one which is malignant and does. The industry has a weird superposition of understanding this fact and (strategically?) not understanding it.


The benign product is sovereign programmable money, which is historically a niche interest of folks with a relatively clustered set of beliefs about the state, the literary merit of Snow Crash, and the utility of gold to the modern economy.

This product has narrow appeal and, accordingly, is worth about as much as everything else on a 486 sitting in someone's basement is worth.

The other product is investment scams, which have approximately the best product market fit of anything produced by humans. In no age, in no country, in no city, at no level of sophistication do people consistently say "Actually I would prefer not to get money for nothing."

This product needs the exchanges like they need oxygen, because the value of it is directly tied to having payment rails to move real currency into the ecosystem and some jurisdictional and regulatory legerdemain to stay one step ahead of the banhammer.
This is NONSENSE. The people who take photos with their books on instagram are known to be voracious readers who graciously take time to review books and recommend them to their followers. Part of their medium is to take elaborate, beautiful photos of books. Die mad, Guardian.


THEY DO READ THEM, YOU JUDGY, RACOON-PICKED TRASH BIN


If you come for Bookstagram, i will fight you.

In appreciation, here are some of my favourite bookstagrams of my books: (photos by lit_nerd37, mybookacademy, bookswrotemystory, and scorpio_books)