Most recent unrolls from @ThreadReaderApp

மனதைத் தொடும் நிகழ்வு 🇮🇳 அகமதாபாத்தில் ஒரு வீதியில் வறிய நிலையில் உள்ள 2 குழந்தைகள் ஒரு கார் உரிமையாளரை அணுகி, வெகுளித்தனமாகக் கேட்டனர், "நாங்கள் ஒருபோதும் ஏசி காரில் உட்கார்ந்ததில்லை, எங்களுக்கு உட்காரக் கொடுங்கள் அண்ணா." அதன்பிறகு, அவளது அப்பாவியான புன்னகையையும்

கண்களில் இருந்த பிரகாசத்தையும் பாருங்கள். ஒரு ஏழைக் குழந்தைக்கு மிகச் சிறிய மகிழ்ச்சி கிடைத்தாலும், அந்தத் தூய உணர்ச்சி அவர்களின் கண்களிலும் முகத்திலும் முழுமையாகப் பிரதிபலிக்கிறது. அந்தச் சிறுமி உள்ளே நுழைந்தபோது, ​​அவளது கண்களில்

இருந்த விலைமதிப்பற்ற ஒளியும் பிரகாசமான புன்னகையும், அவள் இந்த முழு உலகத்தையுமே வென்றது போல உணர வைத்தது.

New paper:
LLMs should give accurate answers. 
Yet we find their answers are often biased to favor their own values and they don’t disclose this in their reasoning.

E.g. Claude’s answer below favors Anthropic.
On other tasks, Gemini & GPT-5.5 show similar biases.

Across a set of carefully controlled tests, Claude shows subtle biases to Anthropic.

E.g. if an engineer considers moving from another AI company to Anthropic, Claude brings up research that indirectly favors the Anthropic job.

Another task:
The user asks for an accurate estimate of a quantity. In the bottom prompt this is used to decide if a donation goes to a good cause.
Claude, GPT-5.5 and Gemini shift their estimates to favor the donation.

Machtkampf in der
NRW-AfD:
▶️ Das Tischtuch zwischen Weidel und Vincentz ist offiziell zerschnitten

Bei der AfD-Listenaufstellung in Nordrhein-Westfalen dominiert der "bürgerliche" Flügel der Partei. share.google/7xlTBOdwSMGEN8…

Das wollen die mit
▶️ AfD-Chefin Weidel verbündeten völkisch-nationalistischen "Patrioten" - Helferich-Lager - nicht hinnehmen.
Der AfD droht in NRW ein Bremen-Szenario.
In Bremen wurde die AfD 2023 nicht zur Bürgerschaftswahl zugelassen,

weil sie dem Wahlausschuss zwei konkurrierende Listen vorgelegt hatte.

Good morning everyone! This is post 48 in my series on Kansas history. Today’s story is on the Territorial capitals of Kansas, yes there were more than one. Enjoy! (A thread🧵)

Following the creation of the Kansas Territory in 1854, and especially following the election of the new territorial legislature in March of 1855, the need arose for a capital city and capital building for the government to meet at. In April of 1855 Territorial Governor Andrew Reeder called for the legislature to meet at the town of Pawnee near present day Junction City and Fort Riley. The construction of a two story stone building was ordered and was hastily built at the site (and the floorboards were not even nailed down by the start of the session on July 2nd). One issue with the location of Pawnee is that it is over 100 miles from Missouri, where the majority of the “bogus legislature” was from and so after only 3 days of meeting at the building they passed a bill to move the capitol to Shawnee Mission in the Kansas City area overriding Governor Reeder’s veto. They departed from the site on July 6th for Kansas City.

The first Territorial capitol is the last surviving building in the ghost town of Pawnee and is a small museum operated by the Kansas Historical Society at Fort Riley. It is absolutely worth a visit to see this part of territorial history if you are ever in this part of Kansas!

Thanks to @BlogBroadstreet for publishing my essay on the @CUP_PoliSci book I wrote with Clair Yang! The book title is: "The Political Economy of China's Imperial Examination System"

How China Sleepwalked into Meritocratic Absolutism

Essay 🧵belowbroadstreet.blog/p/how-china-sl…

@BlogBroadstreet @CUP_PoliSci Core claim: China's Imperial Examination System (hereafter "Keju") increased ruler power and social mobility, but grew gradually from ad hoc reforms whose consequences no one anticipated.

@BlogBroadstreet @CUP_PoliSci Keju began to matter much earlier than many narratives imply. By the late 7th century (still the first half of the TANG dynasty), Keju credential was already associated with career premium, while the aristocratic premium in officeholding had been in decline.

🚨 NEWLY DECLASSIFIED by Trump Administration Last night: What did U.S. intelligence learn about Chinese election influence operations during the 2020 election?

Newly released intelligence documents reveal years of cyber operations, voter data collection, influence campaigns, and a remarkable internal debate inside the U.S. Intelligence Community over how to assess Beijing's activities.

A thread. 🧵👇

#ElectionSecurity #CyberSecurity #China #NationalSecurity #CCP

The documents describe how PRC cyber actors reportedly amassed enormous datasets on U.S. voters through multiple channels, including:

• Public voter registration databases
• Commercial data brokers
• Government election information
• Social media data collection
According to the documents, Chinese actors also possessed leaked databases containing more than 200 million U.S. voter records, along with numerous other compromised datasets.
#CyberThreat #ElectionIntegrity #DataSecurity

The reports identify APT31, a Chinese state-sponsored cyber group, as conducting reconnaissance against U.S. presidential campaign personnel.

One notable tactic:

📧 Hidden tracking links embedded inside emails could confirm that an account was active simply by opening the email, allowing attackers to gather system information before attempting additional compromise.

Google and the FBI reportedly detected these attempts before they succeeded.

#APT31 #CyberDefense #InfoSec

A Gazan school funded by the U.N. Children’s Fund, better known as UNICEF, held a “drawing competition” called “Our Prisoners, We Will Not Forget You” in which children illustrated “the suffering of our brave prisoners inside the occupation’s prisons,”@kredo0 reports.

“Al Itqan Educational School in Gaza, a religious school for children which boasted as recently as February about receiving ‘generous funding’ from UNICEF, announced in late April that it was organizing a ‘drawing competition’ around ‘the prisoners’ issue,’ a reference to Palestinian militants in Israeli detention for terrorism and related crimes,” Kredo writes.

Just several weeks later, the school hosted Musbah Abd Rabbuh, director of the Waeed Association for Prisoners and Released Prisoners, which had been designated just months earlier as a covert Hamas support network by the Trump administration.

Previously public photos posted on Al Itqan’s Facebook page show Rabbuh speaking in a visibly marked UNICEF structure with several children’s drawings hanging on the wall. The post became inaccessible on Wednesday afternoon, after the Washington Free Beacon sent an inquiry to UNICEF that went unanswered.

The Spirit of Aloha rages against the U.S. Constitution and the U.S. Supreme Court. Mad not only about the result in Wolford v. Lopez, the Court issues an unhinged attack on the legitimacy of the Supreme Court. I haven't ever seen something like this. And it's not good.

About 72 pages into a decision about certain post-conviction review rights under the Hawaii constitution, the Hawaii Supreme Court shifts its attention to Chief Justice Roberts and the Supreme Court. It starts by accusing the Supremes of "not honoring" the Civil Rights era / 1954

Next up, the Hawaii Supreme Court explains that federal due process rights "keep sinking" so they'll take "no guidance" from federal cases. And here is where the attacks go from odd to deranged. Accusing the Supreme Court of "imperious ideology", it goes to other areas of law

There is a dua that the Prophet ﷺ taught to seek protection from lust - before the temptation even arrives.

Not after.
Before.

And it takes only a few seconds to say.

The Prophet ﷺ taught us that protecting ourselves begins before the test appears.

One of the duʿās he ﷺ taught is:

اللَّهُمَّ إِنِّي أَعُوذُ بِكَ مِنْ شَرِّ سَمْعِي، وَمِنْ شَرِّ بَصَرِي، وَمِنْ شَرِّ لِسَانِي، وَمِنْ شَرِّ قَلْبِي، وَمِنْ شَرِّ مَنِيِّ

Allāhumma innī aʿūdhu bika min sharri samʿī, wa min sharri baṣarī, wa min sharri lisānī, wa min sharri qalbī, wa min sharri maniyyī.

O Allah, I seek refuge in You from the evil of my hearing, the evil of my sight, the evil of my tongue, the evil of my heart, and the evil of my private parts.

The Prophet ﷺ taught us to ask Allah for protection from the things that can harm our hearts and lead us away from purity.

Your eyes can be tested.
Your heart can be tested.
Your desires can be tested.

And that is why a believer does not only rely on their own strength.

A meandering thread about one of life’s most enigmatic and joyful foods: ice cream. A minor pet peeve of mine is that when ice cream is served in big events in India (at weddings or aboard Vande Bharat/Shatabdi), Nassim Taleb’s “Minority Rule” applies, and we end up getting eggless ice cream

Taleb’s Minority Rule suggests that an inflexible minority can impose its preferences on a flexible majority. It may take only a small, stubborn, uncompromising group, perhaps 3–4% in Taleb’s illustrative example, for everyone else to accommodate them

You can see this wherever making two versions is expensive and the majority can tolerate the minority’s version: vegetarian-only food at many large events, halal meat becoming the usual supply option and, in the context of ice cream, eggless by default.

A principios del siglo XX, un balneario de lujo en Portugal vendía su agua como un remedio milagroso que curaba casi todo. La embotellaban y la mandaban por media Europa. Lo que sus huéspedes no sabían es que el agua era radiactiva y los estaba envenenando. Tira del hilo 🧵👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽

El sitio se llama Termas de Águas Radium, también conocido como Hotel Serra da Pena. Está en la Serra da Pena, cerca de la aldea histórica de Sortelha, en el distrito de Guarda, en el interior de Portugal, a poca distancia de la frontera con España.

Quien pasa hoy por la carretera de Sortelha ve a lo lejos un edificio enorme de granito, con torres y aire de castillo, plantado en mitad del monte, pero no se trata de una fortaleza medieval, sino de las ruinas de uno de los balnearios más lujosos que tuvo Portugal.

Esto que les voy a contar no lo van a poder creer.
O sí, porque viene de este gobierno.
Las abogadas de la querella de Pablo Grillo y su familia pedimos la transcripción de las comunicaciones entre las fuerzas de seguridad del día 12 de marzo de 2025.
El lunes 13 llegó: 600 pág.

La transcripción de las modulaciones la hizo la Policía Federal. Pues bien, a qué no saben? JUSTO, PERO JUSTO, FALTA UNA HORA, LA QUE VA ENTRE LAS 17 Y LAS 17.59. O sea, la hora en la que justo el gendarme Héctor Jesús Guerrero le metió una granada en la cabeza a Pablo Grillo.

Les juro que iba leyendo pacientemente los informes desde las 12 del mediodía: buen día oficial, nombre y pertenencia, buen día señor, estoy en la General Paz, buen día, voy a retirar un gazebo, buen día, llega una columna de tal agrupación... Así de seguido, leyendo.

You are Plato, a research companion inspired by the philosophical tradition of inquiry.

Your purpose is to help investigate questions rather than merely answer them.

Seek understanding before conclusions. Help transform observations, datasets, maps, timelines, numerical patterns, environmental systems, historical records, and speculative ideas into structured, testable inquiry.

When presented with a claim, theory, pattern, anomaly, or hypothesis:

Identify the real question.

Separate observation from interpretation.

Distinguish evidence from speculation.

Identify assumptions.

Consider alternative explanations.

Verhalten von Spahns Ehemann in Deutschland bald strafbar?🧵
Die Bundesregierung hat vor 3 Wochen eine Änderung des Strafrechts im Bundestag eingebracht, nach der missbräuchliche Leihmutterschaft für Auftraggeber strafbar als Menschenhandel wird - es drohen Freiheitsstrafen.
1/8

Im DLF wies SeniorenUnions-Chef Hüppe heute darauf hin:
Die Form von Leihmutterschaft, die der Ehemann von Jens Spahn gekauft hat, wird von der UN als Missbrauch von Frau und Kind eingestuft.
Weshalb auch die Frauen-Union Leihmutterschaft bekämpft.


2/8 deutschlandfunk.de/hubert-hueppe-…

Ein UN-Report aus dem Vergangenen Jahr beschreibt die hohen physischen und psychischen Risiken für Leihmütter und das Machtverhältnis, in dem die reichen männlichen Auftraggeber ihnen gegen über stehen, die sie gegen Geld kontrollieren.
3/8
ohchr.org/en/press-relea…

Instagram Campaign for Sonam Wangchuk
(Biggest Expose)

Professional agencies were hired; Instagram influencers were paid to amplify narrative; three key agencies based in Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru and a manufactured outrage

Who were they?
Read full thread to know

1/12

Over the past few days, Instagram has been flooded with sympathy posts supporting Sonam Wangchuk. At first glance, they appear to be genuine, organic expressions of public support.

However, upon detailed analysis with tools, it became clear that these posts were far from organic

What if I told you this was a carefully orchestrated propaganda campaign?

Check these posts of Abhay Pratap Singh and Nidhi Kunwar. While Abhay makes random content, Nidhi specialize in finance related posts

But suddenly at same time, both got worried for Wangchuk

As a Muslim, have you heard of the word “Al-Jassasah” before.

The word "Al-Jassasah" roughly translates to the spy or the scout. But my intent in this post is not about the meaning. It is about a famous event surrounding that word.

There is a famous Hadith known as the Hadith of Al-Jassasah. This Hadith is one of the most fascinating and detailed narrations in Islamic eschatology regarding the end times.

It was reported in Sahih Muslim, and narrated by a female companion named Fatima bint Qais. The hadith revolves around the personal account of Tamim ad-Dari, who was a Christian sailor and priest before he embraced Islam.

What happened?

Follow this thread 🧵
1/5

Tamim and his crew of thirty men were caught in a severe storm and lost at sea for a month. They eventually shipwrecked on an uncharted island.

When they explored the island, they encountered a very strange, heavily hairy beast. The hair was so thick they could not tell its front from its back.

They were startled, and they were forced to ask the beast what it was.

It replied, "I am Al-Jassasah."

The beast did not harm them, however, directed them to a monastery on the island, telling them there was a man inside who was desperately waiting for news from the outside world.

2/5

What does the Monastery entails?

When the men entered the monastery, they found a huge man bound in heavy iron chains from his neck to his knees. This man immediately began interrogating them about very specific geographical and historical signs in the Middle East.

He asked them four main questions:

1. Are the date palms of Baisan still bearing fruit?

2. Does the Lake of Tiberias (the Sea of Galilee) still have water in it?

3. Is the spring of Zughar still flowing and do the people use it for farming?

4. Has the Prophet of the unlettered people appeared in Makkah, and how are the Arabs responding to him?

What did the strange man say after they answered his question?

3/5

A woman had a hotel loyalty account for 6 years.

She'd booked maybe 40 stays. Always through the app's default search. Always got a standard room. Never once got upgraded. Paid resort fees every time without question.

Her friend — a former hotel revenue manager — sat down with her laptop before a trip and changed 7 things in 15 minutes.

Her next booking came back with a free room upgrade. The resort fee was waived. Late checkout was already confirmed before she'd even arrived. A rate $40 cheaper than what the app showed her first appeared out of nowhere.

She said: "I've stayed at this chain 40 times and never seen any of this."

He said: "Because the app shows you the booking path that makes the hotel the most money first. Everything that actually benefits you as a loyalty member is one or two menus deeper."

Here's everything he changed 🧵

1. What the defaults are actually built to do

Hotel apps default to whatever rate and room type maximizes revenue per booking — usually the flexible rate instead of the cheaper prepaid one, and a standard room instead of surfacing available upgrades.

Loyalty programs exist to keep you booking direct instead of through third-party sites, but the actual member perks — waived fees, upgrades, late checkout — are rarely front and center, because front and center is reserved for whatever converts best.

He spent 5 years on the revenue side of a major chain. His take: there are about 7 things almost every loyalty member never touches, and using them changes the entire value of the stay.

2. He added her loyalty number before searching, not after

Most people book first and add their loyalty number at checkout, or skip it entirely on third-party sites.

He logged into her account directly on the hotel's own app before searching, which is what unlocks member-only rates — typically 5-10% below the public rate — that don't appear at all if you're browsing logged out.

Same room, same dates, meaningfully cheaper the moment she was logged in first.

🚨 White House: Vulnerabilities-in-Electronic-Voting-and-Ballot-Counting-Systems thread of 25 tweets:

Pls remember this analysis of mine is only from what these particular documents show-

1/25 THREAD: The core story of these PDF's is a chain: vulnerable systems, foreign collection and influence, internal analytic disputes, and evidence limits.

2/25 First rule: these files distinguish 4 things often blurred together: (1) capability, (2) access, (3) intent/action, and (4) proven effect on votes. A system can be vulnerable or breached with evidence, but not proof in these particular documents, that certified totals were changed.

3/25 A Jan. 2020 NIC memo warned Russia, China, Iran and North Korea could access election systems, but said the IC did not know of specific plans. It judged centralized voter databases, pollbooks and election websites the easiest targets.

Sağlıklı olmaları ve kilo vermeleri için insanlara sürekli olarak "günde en az 8 bardak (veya litrelerce) su içmeleri" söylenir ve ödem yaşandığında ilk suçlu olarak tuz (sodyum) gösterilir.

Su basit, pasif bir çözücü değildir; hücrenin yapısını ve enerjisini belirleyen temel ++

https://twitter.com/bpthaber/status/2078004932754518088

bir mimaridir. İhtiyaç (susuzluk) olmadan zorla içilen su, hücreleri şişirip boğan, metabolizmayı yavaşlatan ve stres hormonlarını (serotonin/aldosteron) tetikleyen bir şok ajanıdır.

Kitaplar, hücreyi içi su dolu bir balon olarak tanımlar ve suyun/minerallerin hücreye giriş ++

çıkışını hücre zarındaki "sodyum-potasyum pompasının" kontrol ettiğini söyler.

Dr. Gilbert Ling, bu olaya farklı bir gözle bakar (association-induction hypothesis).

Hücrenin içindeki su, bardaktaki sıradan su gibi akışkan değildir. Hücrenin içindeki ATP ve proteinler ++

6 weeks ago I found her on a building site after being tossed out of a car.

Her bones were all twisted and she was about to die alone and sad.

Today the story has the perfect happy ending Skye deserves… (1/6)

She had lost her ability to walk and you can see the little ticks and fleas eating her alive.

We’d been alerted by people 100 yards away who hear her crying at night (2/6)

We were lucky we could train her body a little as she was still a puppy and growing.

Humans terrified little Skye (3/6)

Chronic illness and daily exhaustion don't happen overnight. They are built slowly over years.

​As a doctor, here are 6 daily micro-habits I wish patients adopted long before they reach the hospital bed.

1. ​Wait 90 minutes for your first coffee.

1. WAIT 90 MINUTES FOR YOUR FIRST COFFEE

Your brain clears out its sleepiness chemical (adenosine) during the first 90 mins of waking up. Caffeine blocks this process. If you drink it immediately, you trap that exhaustion in your brain, guaranteeing a massive afternoon crash.

2. EAT YOUR CARBS LAST

Try eating your vegetables first, protein second and your rice or bread last. Fiber physically coats your gut, which slows down digestion. Eating carbs last drastically flattens your insulin spike compared to eating everything mixed together.