BC TRUMP
Saved by @Mollyycolllinss

1/ Another observation the #Literalist fallacy I see about how much Trump (ym'sh) has planned all of the chaos & violence. My overarching point will be that society is structured & that means there's an inherent pattern to effects no matter the 'intelligence' behind the causes

 2/ The virus should teach us this. #Literalists claim it was made in a lab because they see a killing-machine that carves its way through society and they must apply individual force & cause to the effectiveness of the biological organism
3/ #Literalists see only the tree, not the forest, so they think every effect stands alone, and thus has individual cause. This is the root fallacy of 'intelligent design'

its what led my ancestors to presume every disease is caused by a demon. Nature becomes personified.
4/ [Note, I'm not a deist, I believe in an active, caring God - the God of the Exodus, not just Genesis - but, ironically, in our hidden-faced age I can only see God's presence in the anomalies of nature (miracles), when it skips a pattern, and not from it's surface efficiency.]
5/ So nature looks intelligent, but that's another irony: we only see overt nature when it works. A dysfunctional organism, an inefficient virus, won't replicate to a degree that we'll experience & perceive it, especially as a culture
6/ We only see new viruses when the process of nature/evolution has fine-tuned it to mass productive possibility. And the key is, human design wouldn't be as efficient as the rapid evolutionary churn of unfettered biology.
7/ This is why I don't put much hope or fear into AI recreating a human brain any time soon. Machines are reflections of their makers & human ability is too limited at this point

That's also why I don't fear machines "taking over" (but I do fear the goo https://t.co/ermtJdhkgc)
8/ Gray goo isn't taking over, it's just a machine let loose without proper controls, much like a loose nuke.

(My fear of the Matrix was quelled when I realized how often I needed to clear Xerox jams and/or replace the toner on my printer)
9/ Bringing it back to Trump (ym'sh) & the plan versus accident debate

The genial genius @AlexandraErin often points out DJT is a nimble & canny opportunist, and will nearly always operate reactively, but will talk as if it's his plan all along.
10/ So we can inoculate ourselves from his blarney and know: he never plans. @TheRealHoarse, an experiential expert in malignant narcissists, often explains that 'narcs' don't plan, every move is for the immediate only. Hence why DJT constantly jumps from bad to worse
11/ Yet, like with "intelligent design" and personifying viruses, when we narrative-seeking humans try to reconstruct events, we perceive order when there isn't. This has helped the paramount con-man Trump (ym'sh) craft a tale of high acumen from a series of structural advantages
12/ DJT is also so easily manipulated it's frightening, so along the way a bunch of cannier planners have been aiming his Id like a gun at whatever problem they want smashed. Bill Barr, Putin, Erdogan, Bibi, Bannon etc., those slime DO plan things. That complicates things.
13/ But I often see whatever scheme Trump (ym'sh) initiates is usually a product of his horrible impulses trapped within a very powerful, unstable machine; and the pattern we see is an echoed reflection of the structure he's crashing into.
14/ Society has made our government as powerful as a warship and Trump (ym'sh) has been smashing buttons because he likes the noise and hates what he sees in the window.

When you add onto it all the structural inequities of our society & white supremacy, it looks like 2020 did
15/ I wish I could say what I want to here in a better way, but I wanted to get this down before I forgot it, in whatever way it occurred for me to say

Part of this is #Literalist thinking, part is seeking narrative coherence when there is none.
16/ Ultimately, as an existentialist philosopher, I come back to the observation that the world doesn't make the sense we want it to have, so we need to just take care of each other above everything else.

Love and compassion are the remedy for the injustice built into nature.
17/ Yes, my faith tells me that God will come into history and rescue with great miracles like in this week's parsha (#Vaera) but that's just one side of the Brit Bein Ha-Betarim; sometimes we see the flame but other times we're the animals the flame passes through.
18/ Knowing that God is who I will appeal for help & safety, along with a society that I help construct that operates according to justice, compassion, respect for individuals, rejecting all forms of slavery - these are the lessons of the Exodus. Not that God always swoops down.
19/ Moshe needed to learn this at the start of the parsha; he didn't understand why God allowed the slavery to get worse as a result of Moshe starting his mission.

[Note, that intro is part of how I understand the 'chevlei mashiach' - the birthpangs of the messiah]
20/ The need for mutual aid as a tool of the redemption is why IMO we say that the Israelite women were instrumental in the miracle. Moshe is designed to be just a tool of the divine (hence his paramount, self-negating, humility). The Israelites were supposed to do the real work.
21/ What was the action wrought by the women that we say was 'oto ha-nes' - part of the miracle? There are the specific, named heroes like Bat Paroh, Miriam, Shifra & Puah. The Talmud (Sota 11b) crafts a story of more collective action
https://t.co/RhZgDDqpbV
22/ Whether the story is meant to be taken literally or not, the purpose is to show how many individual actions by the women, whose motivation was to keep the faith, keep believing in a future, and above all: a commitment to taking care of people.
23/ I've taught this midrash of the unnamed women as a case study in understanding how midrash works: the actions of Batya (unnamed as Bat Paro), Miriam (unnamed as "his sister"), Shifra & Puah (presumed pseudonyms) are shown to be representative of the culture of resistance
24/ In Sota 11b we see a fanciful tale of what women would do to take care of the entire nation, no different from Batya saving one life, Miriam watching her infant brother & not leaving his fate to chance, Shifra & Puah resisting through omission and subterfuge
25/ But the message of the miracle the women wrought in the Exodus, in my teaching, is to show what actually brought the full miracle of salvation: taking individual actions, even small family actions in private, that cumulatively crafted a culture of care
26/ A surface-thinking #Literalist view can see the Exodus as a mano-a-mano battle of Moshe & Pharaoh, but the midrash tells us that it was a battle fought every day, by every family, to keep the faith and keep compassion and life in the forefront
27/ This thread started with a number of disparate observations and ended with a parsha shiur. I assure you that wasn't planned (heh).

I'll end for now. Twitter is forcing me to.

@threadreaderapp please unroll.

@threader_app please compile.

More from Joshua Cypess

Joshua Cypess
Joshua Cypess
@JoshuaCypess
1/ OK a few more #Exodus thoughts (because I'm going through a mountain of parsha stuff amidst all my other writing) connected to the #DvarTorah here about the nameless collective-compassionate action of the multitude being the engine of the salvation.


2/ It struck me to link to another conundrum (kinda like the large plague frog in the room): how Pharaoh has his free will removed

So, the nameless action could be a purposeful contrast to the singular powerful individual who normally is history's

3/ IMO God manipulates Pharaoh in order to prevent one person making too much of a difference!

This ties into another larger point I often make about the culpability of the Egyptians & how actually they, not Pharaoh, are the focus of the plagues.

4/ My point contrasts how the Egyptians - who were responsible for being enslavers, for dehumanizing & stealing the labor of Israelites up to the point of joining in the Pharaoh command of infanticide (see

5/ These individuals needed to make their choices without coercion from the autocrat, hence Pharaoh lost 'free will' in his capacity as someone who can move the engines of political power.

He lost free will in order to preserve the free will & action of his subjects
POLITICS
Joshua Cypess
Joshua Cypess
@JoshuaCypess
1/ Many people remark that we wouldn't have survived 4 more years of Trump (ym'sh) - and I agree - but this was a 40 year project of destroying the democratic form of US gov., starting with Reagan, and accelerated from Gingrich.

DJT was to almost the final hammer blow.

2/ Both Roosevelts changed the function of the government from preserving the entrenched power to an instrument to help people survive & thrive

TR was a Progressive, tore down the monopolies, established public health etc. When he left the party, the GOP became what it is today

3/ Wilson took up TR's platform (TR helped by splitting the 1912 vote) and when the GOP won in 1920, they actively tried to undermine the entire new project of what America would do for its

4/ Of course 12 years of retrograde regressive GOP destroyed the economy and led to a worldwide depression which aided the rise of totalitarianism around the world. 1920/1929 and 2020 share so many characteristics

But FDR, thank God, was able to pull us from the brink

5/ For the next 40 years FDR's vision of the government being the support and protector of its citizenry culminated in LBJ's Great Society, finally bringing many of the gifts to the oppressed engine that drove America's prosperity: African-Americans
POLITICS
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Joshua Cypess
Joshua Cypess
@JoshuaCypess
1/ A thread of comments & observations about the death of the cackling vampire Rush Limbaugh.

My first observations in the main thread are here, but this offshoot is needed because there's been so many wise & witty things I've


2/ First, re: those who in their wayward moral obtuseness feel we "can't speak ill of the dead." I've said that this is what abuse enablers say, but I hear that some religious traditions preach this. Oy.
So there's this: https://t.co/7Ky4RA3nkZ &


3/ Drucker is another great wit, and this carries the proper mood


4/ There's definitely a Jewish Tradition angle for how to treat evil people who die: the only respect is to justice, right & wrong, and above all compassion's existence necessitates condemning cruelty


5/ We're coming up on #Purim, and that's all about how to remember evil. There may be a reason, then, that I share the attitude of many other people committed to righting
SOCIETY
Joshua Cypess
Joshua Cypess
@JoshuaCypess
1/ This thread is an attempt to capture some of the week's discussions about Q*non and how to handle the cult followers and the danger they embody

(Side note, I plan to ask the Trumpites I know who're still clinging to their hate, "How's Q?" so they can confront the association)
POLITICS
Joshua Cypess
Joshua Cypess
@JoshuaCypess
1/ I'm just reflecting about how many leaders from the Modern Orthodox community passed away in 2020. The list is an overwhelming pantheon of pivotal, unique, and creative rabbis. I'm stunned by the enormity of the loss.

2/ Right at the end of the year, the 9th of Tevet, we lost Rav Henkin z'l, probably the most prominent & compassionate Dati-Leumi posek we had! It's rare to have a highly superior halakhist with unimpeachable standards who is also wise &

3/ Another Dec. loss: Rav Schwartz z'l of Chicago, another towering posek who took brave & indominable positions that understood modern society while having complete, airtight respect for tradition.

In my work in medical halakha, he was a crucial

4/ In Nov. we lost Rabbi Dr. Sacks z'l! His paramount leadership wasn't in halakha but in theology. He was able to navigate the secular & traditional worlds at the highest level; a rare rabbi whose philosophical work was universally recognized as

5/ In Aug. we lost Rav Steinsaltz z'l! I'm - accurately - running out of superlatives; please understand this thread is not overstated. Steinsaltz is a nearly irreplaceable, unique figure in modern Jewish
SOCIETY

More from Trump

Ryan Goodman
Ryan Goodman
@rgoodlaw
It’s not clear how Dr. Sean Conley has determined Trump will no longer need to isolate only 10 days after symptom onset.

Looks like the CDC Guidelines say Trump should be in the category that needs to isolate for 20 days after symptom onset.👇

Plus ...



2. Fauci on Thursday used a (test-based) approach, in which case, per Fauci:

Trump needs to isolate for 10 days after symptoms RESOLVE (not symptoms onset) and then two negative tests.

Note: based on his coughing on Hannity last night, Trump’s symptoms haven’t resolved yet.


3. Here’s a longer quote from Fauci (via @MarionRenault):

https://t.co/oRdrtxQe80


4. Also noteworthy: on Hannity last night, Trump wouldn’t say he’s tested negative.👇

Thus failing one of the conditions required by Fauci for Trump to be considered no longer contagious.


5/5. This resource on coronavirus (UpToDate) has been specially made available to the public. It describes the test-based and non-test-based approaches.
TRUMP
JaLove
JaLove
@LovesTheLight
Why am RTg this Rush post? Because @AnjillofLight_ just advised me that @rushlimbaugh is handing his show over to @realDonaldTrump tomorrow 10/9.

Playing both the Rush and Trump Cards

Coincidence the movie The Trump Card is out tomorrow 10/9. https://t.co/RT45TDE8HP


I'm your Huckleberry. I knew it.🤣
https://t.co/gqHfFWfxZO


All the Rush graphics are in linked threads throughout
##FLY##
[OWL]

https://t.co/b9px5Mt3iN


Only the full release of docs can give conclusive evidence.

Dangle Operation
Sanctions are coming
11/4
11/5


Make sure you go to the concession stand and get your popcorn, beverage and candy.
https://t.co/laVxyfS5ax
TRUMP
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Fidato
Fidato
@tequieremos
President Trump has pardoned four Blackwater contractors who killed 17 Iraqi citizens including a 9 year old Ali,19 year old Ahmed and 11 year old Qasim in one of the worst acts of terrorism.

In this thread I'm sharing the heart wrenching accounts from that day in 2007.


On Sept 16 2007, at approximately 12:08 p.m. in Nisour Square Baghdad, a heavily armed Blackwater convoy consisting of four “Mamba” armored vehicles with 7.62-millimeter machine guns mounted on top made a surprise U turn as they entered the square.

[1]

While the blackwater convoy entered, a young Iraqi medical student named Ahmed Hathem al-Rubaie was driving his mother, Mahasin, in Opal sedan after dropping his father Jawad at a hospital where he worked as a pathologist. Ahmed was in the third year of medical school.

[2]

It was the month of Ramadan so they were fasting. Ahmed’s mother, was also a doctor--an allergist. They could've left Iraq but Jawad believed they were needed in the country. “I feel pain when I see doctors leaving Iraq,” he said.

[3]

Ali Khalaf Salman, an Iraqi traffic cop, was on duty in Nisour Square on that day. As Khalaf watched, the blackwater convoy came to an abrupt halt and a large white man with a mustache, positioned atop the third vehicle in the Blackwater convoy, began to fire randomly.

[4]
TRUMP
A.R. Moxon
A.R. Moxon
@JuliusGoat
The Great American Forgetting Project starts today. They're going to simultaneously try to tell us the last four years were an aberration that is over, and that it never happened.

And it's natural to want to forget these awful years.

It's our moral duty not to.


Those who benefit from our country's malicious priorities will do everything they can now to get us to forget how incontrovertibly Trump exposed those priorities.

Many of us thought we were something better than we were, but now we know.

We've seen our nation's face.


And many among us knew the truth all along. Many of us always saw our nation unmasked, because they were the ones who suffered it.

They told us all along, and the rest of us didn't listen.

Now that they've been proven correct, we're going to be asked to not listen again.


We can't deny anymore, that there are people among us, everywhere, for whom no lie is so obvious they won't believe it, as long as they think it serves their ends.

They don't care about truth, and never did.

We should care about truth, and speak it plain.

This is us.


We've seen our national tolerance for open racism, for cruelty, for corruption, for false equivocation.

Not just the tolerance, but the enthusiasm.

Trump didn't create it. It was there. He exploited it.

We'll never become what we want to be if we don't admit what we are.
TRUMP
Moondeer
Moondeer
@kelleydawg
Loving your take, @LindseyGrahamSC, you go get that 2022 Trump base … wait … are all y’all at @MSNBC rope-a-doping Lindsey? Better f$&kin’ DM and let me know, if so, before someone finally shows Lindsey the future I’ve chosen to write for him).

You know … Lindsey … I want you to think about something


Now if a small group can change the country, what do you want to f$&kin’ bet that ONE MF can change this country?

Oh thank Christ! I was worried you might go the other way and that would totally f$&k up everything I had left to say.

‘Cause Lindsey, I have learned something this week. We are all familiar with the phrase:
TRUMP

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SK
@sk_diary1
A #story from #Thiruvilayadal puranam- one of divine leelas of Bhagwan Shiva

#threadseries #madurai

Koodal Kaandam

Story 21 - it is about how stone elephant came to life and ate sugarcane - When Raja Abhisheka Pandyan met Ellam Valla Siddhar

கல்யானைக்கு கரும்பருத்திய படலம்


Raja Abhisheka Pandiyan went ahead to meet Ellam Valla Siddhar on the premises of the temple.On seeing the arrival of Raja, people surrounding Siddhar moved back. Abhisheka Pandiyan introduced himself to Siddhar &asked about his whereabouts.Also his purpose of visit to Madurai.

Raja asked why he performed magical acts, does he expect anything from him or people of Madurai.

Siddhar laughed & replied to Raja that he was from Kasi. He had heard a lot about Madurai in Kashi.Also told that this place is a Mukti Kshetram,so he had come to stay here.

Siddhar asked Raja if he has the capability &power to give anything that he asks for. Siddhar told King that he has power to do things even if he think of it.Siddhar asked King to ask whatever he wants & it would be provided, whatever these people had asked, they were granted.


Abhisheka Pandyan was shocked to receive such a reply from Siddhar,& he decided to test the power of this Siddhar. By that time, Raja saw a person in crowd having Sugarcane.

Raja took Sugarcane from that person.
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Erik Torenberg
Erik Torenberg
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1/ Some initial thoughts on personal moats:

Like company moats, your personal moat should be a competitive advantage that is not only durable—it should also compound over time.

Characteristics of a personal moat below:


2/ Like a company moat, you want to build career capital while you sleep.

As Andrew Chen noted:


3/ You don’t want to build a competitive advantage that is fleeting or that will get commoditized

Things that might get commoditized over time (some longer than


4/ Before the arrival of recorded music, what used to be scarce was the actual music itself — required an in-person artist.

After recorded music, the music itself became abundant and what became scarce was curation, distribution, and self space.

5/ Similarly, in careers, what used to be (more) scarce were things like ideas, money, and exclusive relationships.

In the internet economy, what has become scarce are things like specific knowledge, rare & valuable skills, and great reputations.
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Corey Lynn \U0001f64f\U0001f1fa\U0001f1f8
Corey Lynn 🙏🇺🇸...
@CoreysDigs
1) OBSERVATION: The frequencies are changing. I would have to assess stats on the electromagnetic field to see its fluctuations. All I know is, I am highly sensitive to energy/frequencies, and they are changing, because…

2) 2 Weeks ago, my dog was effected by it as well. He is hearing things that aren’t technically audible. I can tell by his body language and sounds. One week ago I began feeling a pressure in my head and ears. It wasn’t painful at all, but it was intense for a bit.

3) It reminded me of taking off in an airplane a bit. I felt like I was in a vacuum. It went on and off for a couple of days. I’ve picked up on frequencies and high pitched sounds (not audible to most) for 30 years, and today my right ear began to ring for longer than usual.

4) This is nothing unusual for me, with exception of the duration. This happens often with me. No, it’s not tinnitus. Only this time, when I spoke, there was reverb creating a high pitch in my ear from my voice. This lasted for about 30 minutes. It did not hurt, just annoying.

5) So yes, the frequencies are changing. What this means exactly, I am unsure of at the moment. Some will say electromagnetic fields, others will say ascension, and some will say pole shift. I honestly can’t say at this very moment.
SCIENCE
Roger Grosse
Roger Grosse
@RogerGrosse
Important paper from Google on large batch optimization. They do impressively careful experiments measuring # iterations needed to achieve target validation error at various batch sizes. The main "surprise" is the lack of surprises. [thread]

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.
MACHINE LEARNING
asif
asif
@aj_raja
PAKISTAN-INDIA WATER ISSUES – HOW INDIA STOPPED WATER IN PAKISTAN's CANALS IN 1948

Thread

After partition in 1947, the water system was also bifurcated between Pakistan n India.

India cheated Pakistan when on April 1, 1948, India suddenly n without warning stopped...
1/n


...the supply of waters flowing into Pakistan's Central Bari Doab and Dipalpur Canals.

The boundary award on the partition of the sub-continent had left the headworks of these canals in Indian territory, and in accepting it India had implied her willingness to leave...

2/n


...the historic distribution of common waters undisturbed.

India's action was therefore in flagrant disregard not only of international law n morality, but of her solemn commitments with Pakistan and a gross violation of this country's historical rights over common waters.

3/n

Faced with a threat of utter desolation of millions of acres of fertile land, Pakistan had perforce to sign a document with India in which she agreed to "India's progressively diminishing water supplies to these canals and to the West Punjab government's tapping...

4/n

...alternative resources".

A specific reservation was made in the document with regard to India's claim that she had full property rights over waters flowing into her territory, and could therefore use them as she liked.

The issue was, however, to be examined...

5/n
INDIA