Recent well liked threads

1- Thread on the Teapot Dome Scandal, generally the considered the largest Presidential scandal in history short of Watergate.

Teapot Dome refers to an oil field in Wyoming, noted for its large teapot shaped rock.

2- The genesis of the scandal was the Navy’s conversion from coal-burning to oil-burning ships in the early 1900s. This led to ensuring the Navy had an ample supply of oil, in case of war. Today of course we have the Strategic Oil Reserve. But we didn’t then.

3- So the Pickett Act was passed in 1910, giving the Navy control of three large oil fields. They weren’t actively drilled; the purpose was to ensure a large oil supply was available. Teapot Dome was one of these.

https://t.co/jY0Rvyp9qJaoghs.org/petroleum-in-w…

Die Nobelpreisträger Acemoglu & Friends reproduzieren nicht nur aus der Kolonialzeit stammende rassistische Vorurteile, dass afrikanische Gesellschaften unterentwickelt waren, weil sie weder Schrift, noch Rad gehabt hätten (und das trotz der Ankunft der Europäer).

Sie lehnen zwar verbal die kulturelle These der Unterentwicklung ab, also dass es in den besonderen kulturellen Eigenschaften eines Volkes liegt, dass es unterentwickelt ist, holen genau diese dann aber durch die Hintertür wieder rein. Also Beispiel dient hier der Kongo.

Sie geben wieder, dass Kongo ein afrikanisches Köngreich war (das nennen sie, wie alles, was ihnen nicht passt Absolutismus, was Nordkorea bspw. einschließt) und keine freie Gesellschaft war. Einmal entgeht ihnen der Fakt, dass die koloniserenden Länder wie Portugal und Spanien

Omdat het blijkbaar nodig is: 🧵 met uitklaring van misvattingen over geslachtsidentificatie.
Deel 1: begrippen
Deel 2: testen
/1

Nogal wat onduidelijkheid ontstaat door begripsverwarring tussen de definitie van geslacht, geslachtsdeterminatie, geslachtsdifferentiatie, seksueel dimorfisme en geslachtsidentificatie. /2

Definitie van geslacht:
Een geëvolueerde voortplantingsstrategie (reproductief fenotype), in een anisogaam species, die door ontwikkeling is afgestemd op de productie van één van de twee gameettypes:
- Kleine gameten (spermacellen) => ♂
- Grote gameten (eicellen) => ♀
/3

We built a robot brain that nothing can stop.

Shattered limbs? Jammed motors? If the bot can move, the Brain will move it— even if it’s an entirely new robot body.

Meet the omni-bodied Skild Brain:

The Skild Brain can control any machine that walks or rolls.

Watch it inhabit a robot dog that's stood up on two legs.

Being zero-shot, it thinks it's in a humanoid body, so it walks like one:

Chainsaw vs. Robot.

Cap II - “CORROMPERE L'ARBITRO"
🧵1/2

Dopo averne spiegato l'origine e la struttura, rimane ancora in sospeso una domanda, la più importante: quale obiettivo si pone esattamente il network Pravda?

La risposta potrebbe apparire meno ovvia di quanto sembri: è sicuramente un'operazione che serve a diffondere propaganda, a inquinare lo spazio informativo disinformando e a sabotare le democrazie amplificando notizie che le mettano in cattiva luce, tutte cose corrette e risapute, però, come già spiegato, questa rete non crea di suo nessuna di queste cose, si limita a fare un caotico cross-posting automatico di contenuti prodotti da altri su altre piattaforme.
Le pagine del network, più o meno tutte uguali, sono graficamente brutte da vedere e terribilmente noiose da leggere, ed è difficile trovarle tramite i comuni motori di ricerca a meno di non scavare per pagine e pagine; anche il fatto che i contenuti rimbalzino tramite troll e bot sui social network, seppur vero (ne stiamo vedendo giusto ora una dimostrazione su BlueSky che Portal Kombat sta cercando di infettare), non mi è mai sembrata una spiegazione del tutto convincente, in fondo si può realizzare lo stesso risultato anche senza l'uso di questi portali.
Poi, persone più in gamba di me l’hanno capito: il Network Pravda è soprattutto uno strumento per ingannare le intelligenze artificiali tramite la pratica chiamata “LLM grooming”, che in italiano si può rendere come “manipolazione dei grandi modelli di linguaggio”.

https://x.com/fabio_tab/status/1995782547385512305

2/2
Volendo evitare lo spiegone su come vengano istruite le AI, cosa che potete chiedere direttamente a loro, mi limiterò solo a dire che interrogando un’intelligenza artificiale, quando ci sono molte fonti su un argomento, questa fa una selezione di quelle con reputazione o affidabilità maggiore escludendone altre. Esistono tuttavia dei “vuoti informativi” su determinate aree tematiche o argomenti fortemente divisivi in cui ci sono pochi contenuti affidabili e dove attori ostili, come stati o gruppi organizzati, inseriscono contenuti manipolatori o di propaganda.
In altre parole, l’AI, non trovando nulla di meglio e dovendo riempire uno spazio “si accontenta” di quello che c’è o della narrazione che trova in quantità maggiore.

La cattiva notizia è che funziona: ogni AI esistente possiede più nozioni e calcola più velocemente di un premio Nobel, ma, usando le parole di Yann LeCun, pioniere del deep learning, “è meno intelligente di un gatto”.
Se noi dovessimo chiedere a ChatGpt se la terra sia piatta o tonda, questa in un secondo ci darà la risposta corretta (è piatta, ovviamente...), ma se invece la domanda riguardasse una “zona grigia” come, letteralmente, viene chiamata un’area contesa del fronte di guerra, potrebbe dare più credito a chi le fornisce più informazioni o dare risposte opposte a seconda di come viene formulato il quesito. Queste risposte potrebbero in certi casi provenire anche da community notes su X o da hyperlinks su Wikipedia già “infettati” da contenuti propagandistici.

A tutto questo aggiungiamo che Telegram, il principale serbatoio di Pravda, non addestra, se non in casi specifici e limitati, le intelligenze artificiali, è soprattutto il web pubblico a farlo, quindi Pravda, spacciandoli massivamente per "informazione", porta i post dei propagandisti di Telegram nel web pubblico. Tanto semplice, quanto efficace.

Uno studio recente dell’ISD (Institute for Strategic Dialogue) ha testato 300 quesiti alle principali AI riguardanti il conflitto in Ucraina, dimostrando che circa il 18% delle risposte mostrava contenuti attribuiti a media russi o siti legati ad operazioni di propaganda: un risultato del genere, duole dirlo, giustifica appieno il costoso investimento in un'operazione come Pravda.

Nella puntata di domani, cominceremo - finalmente - a vedere quanto in Italia sia profonda l'intrusione di questa rete e dell'ecosistema di cui si nutre.

isdglobal.org/digital_dispat…

It’s wild how many people just accept the statements made by mentally ill people on the internet as gospel. It’s not just a leftist problem.

12 Python libraries for free market data everyone should know:

yfinance

Data for stocks (historic, intraday, fundamental), FX, crypto, and options. Uses Yahoo Finance so any data available through Yahoo is available through yfinance.

github.com/ranaroussi/yfi…

pandas-datareader

pandas-datareader used to be part of the pandas project. Now an independent project. Includes data for stocks, FX, economic indicators, Fama-French factors, and many others.

pandas-datareader.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

President Trump’s National Security Strategy is a clear and powerful articulation of his common-sense, America First, Peace Through Strength agenda.

This Strategy lays out his realistic approach to advancing our nation’s interests, above all by ensuring we are always operating from a position of strength. 1/

President Trump is keenly focused on the U.S. national interest—how U.S. policy will benefit Americans, first. The NSS clearly states that “to focus on everything is to focus on nothing. America’s core national security interests shall be our focus.” 2/

Peace Through Strength is likewise core to President Trump’s vision.

The NSS lays out that “Strength is the best deterrent. Countries or other actors sufficiently deterred from threatening American interests will not do so…Therefore, the United States must maintain the strongest economy, develop the most advanced technologies, bolster our society’s cultural health, and field the world’s most capable military.” 3/

sound design at the dijon show is more exhilarating, unexpected, and mindblowing than anything i heard at autechre. not even close. i’m not “ragebaiting” either; it’s way more shocking to hear all these things happen at a massive venue in the context of pop music

highlights: spamming the “baby” samples until they turned into a sort of ambient haze (i thought of the band Romance); instruments rapidly and repeatedly panning across both stereo channels; successive moments when it sounded like someone suddenly muted every channel on the mixer

one moment sort of replicated the feeling of your ear ringing when a hair dies. there wasn’t any ringing but there was this sudden shift in volume & perception where it sounds like you’re outside yourself… the sort of psychoacoustic phenomena at experimental shows/installations

You really just need to stand up straight

Make some decisions

And follow through

Why you still feel like a kid in an adult body (and how to grow)👇

1. You give emotions the steering wheel

Constructive criticism from your wife. A bad performance review at work. The guy that cut you off earlier

Things happen

Don’t let them derail your entire life

Respond calmly in the moment, don’t react emotionally

Don’t suppress the emotions, either

But you need to find healthy outlets

Hit the gym. Find a hobby. Hit on your wife. Watch Blade Runner 2049.

Find that pressure release valve

FASCISMO

La derrota de la Alemania nazi y sus aliados socavó la posición del fascismo durante mucho tiempo. Después de 1945, el principal peligro fascista en el mundo provino del bloque imperialista reaccionario de las principales potencias imperialistas lideradas por EEUU. +

Todas las clases reaccionarias, todas las fuerzas anti-laborales de otros países capitalistas se unieron a ella. Los imperialistas lanzaron una "guerra fría" contra la URSS. +

En 1949, Estados Unidos creó un bloque militar agresivo, la OTAN. Se construyeron bases militares estadounidenses en varias partes del mundo capitalista contra la URSS, la China socialista y otros países no influenciados por los imperialistas. +

A new product, a new customer, a new financing!

Introducing Superpower: a 42MW natural gas turbine optimized for AI datacenters, built on our supersonic technology. Superpower launches with a 1.21GW order from @CrusoeAI Backstory 🧵👇

1/ Three years ago when we started working on our Symphony supersonic engine, we knew that it would one day make for a breakthrough power turbine

2/ Back then, we registered some energy-related domains and put power on our product roadmap—but expected we'd ship supersonic first, then launch our energy product

Right now, Instacart is quietly running experiments on millions of us while we shop for groceries online. They are trying to figure out exactly how much they can get away with charging you for breakfast cereal, lunch meat, pasta, and everything in between. How do I know? 1/9

The @Groundwork team, @KatieJWells, and I teamed up with @ConsumerReports & @MorePerfectUS to recruit more than 400 secret shoppers. We asked them to buy the exact same basket of groceries, from the exact same store, at the exact same time. You won’t believe what we found. 2/9

@Groundwork @KatieJWells @ConsumerReports @MorePerfectUS Instacart charged shoppers different prices for about 75% of the items in the basket–sometimes they charged as much as 23% more for the exact same item. Using Instacart’s own estimates, we find that the Instacart tax could cost households as much as $1200 a year. 3/9

The credit cycle is starting to flash yellow for the first time in this regime

Most investors will only notice once spreads are blowing out

Here’s the framework I use to track the credit cycle and front‑run where capital goes next: 🧵

First, my macro thesis is simple: Since April we had a massive injection of credit into the underlying economy and liquidity into financial markets. This created procyclical liquidity where growth and liquidity rose at the same time. This is why asset prices melted up.

We are now seeing the beginning of some headwindes in the credit cycle. The entire questions is are these risks shrot term signals or could they materialize into a larger issue?

I am going to lay out all of these macro signals but first I would encourage you to read (or reread!) the macro report I wrote explaining the largest structural risks we are seeing in the system right now. Do we know for sure that these risks will materialize? No but if they do, you need to know exactly what to look for cause that is not an environment where you want to be offsides.

x.com/Globalflows/st…

🚨Veamos qué dice la sentencia que condena al Fiscal General.

Es una sentencia muy motivada e interesante desde el punto de vista jurídico, tanto si se está de acuerdo, o en desacuerdo, con la condena del FGE.

Aviso, esto es un análisis jurídico. Política, a otra cuenta🧵⤵️

https://twitter.com/PoderJudicialEs/status/1998364171650638013

Se alegaron muchas cuestiones previas.

1/ La Abogacía del Estado alegó que no concurrían los presupuestos para acordar el secreto de sumario.

Frente a ello razona la sala que no se vulneró el derecho de defensa y que acordar el secreto está motivado y es ajustado a Derecho.

2/ Se alegó la nulidad del Auto de entrada y registro.

Frente a ello la Sala razona que el Auto era proporcional y estaba adecuadamente motivado, y de forma reforzada como se exige. Y que no había otra alternativa (ya que, en ese caso, se renuncia a la propia investigación)

1. This morning’s argument in NRSC v. FEC illustrates the continuing and increasing absurdity of our campaign-finance regime. The idea that the government can restrict coordination between parties and candidates—to prevent potential indirect bribery of individual politicians by party donors—just makes no sense as a matter of governance, let alone constitutional law.

2. Although the Supreme Court approved that restriction a quarter-century ago by a 5-4 vote, changes in both First Amendment doctrine and intervening practical developments have eroded the validity of that narrow decision (known as Colorado II). Experience in the states, where there’s no correlation between actual corruption or voter confidence in election integrity and the existence of such a coordination bar under state law, puts paid to any theoretical concerns. Legislated loopholes in the coordination restriction have further undermined any justification for the bar. And so it’s heartening that a majority of the Court seems poised to get rid of it.

3. This case is just one more exhibit in the long indictment of how we regulate elections; as the Manhattan Institute argued in our amicus brief, authored by former FEC chairman @CommishSmith, Congress lacks any authority to regulate political speech in the first place.
manhattan.institute/article/amicus…

Brutal -- but accurate -- assessment of the results of Trump's year one policies by @wsj_douglasj and @JonathanEmont of the WSJ

1/

"Strip out imports of energy, food and raw materials, and China is on track this year to post a surplus in manufactured goods of around $2 trillion, a huge sum that is on a par with the annual national income of Russia or Italy" 2/

Exports are a big enough share of China's economy (~ 20%) that two years of 10% or more export volume growth can drive an overall increase in manufacturing output even if the domestic economy is the in doldrums

3/

?wsj.com/world/china/ch…

🧵 #ULTIMAHORA | 2026: El SAT cambia las reglas para todos los contribuyentes en México
En 2026 el SAT amplía facultades y redefine por completo la relación entre contribuyente y Estado.
Lo que viene es un cambio estructural de poder fiscal. 👇

1️⃣ A partir del próximo año, la autoridad podrá suspender operaciones, cancelar sellos y restringir la actividad de una empresa con un simple indicio administrativo, incluso sin sentencia y sin comprobación plena de delito. ⚠️

2️⃣ Lo que antes era fiscalización, ahora evoluciona a un sistema de presunciones.
Basta que la autoridad sospeche que una factura es apócrifa o que existe alguna inconsistencia para detener timbrado y llevar al contribuyente al terreno penal. 🧩