-= Against Blaming Mind Viruses =- 🧵1/25

As we all know, @elonmusk is obsessed with the notion that liberalism is a "woke mind virus" that is progressively destroying society.

In this, he refers to (without using or seemingly knowing the term) memetics.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics 🧵2/25

Long before "meme" became an internet term meaning things like photos of a cat saying "CAN I HAS CHEEZBURGER?", it was a scientific term referring to a thought equivalent of genetics: cultural / social motifs passed down from parent to child, as well as horizontally.

I'll take "Stupid Things People On Twitter Actually Believe" for 1000 rubles, Alex.

This screenshot getting widely circulated is not from a "Ukrainian government kill list", but rather the website "Миротворець" (Myrotvorets, "Peacemaker"):

uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A6%D0…

https://twitter.com/jacksonhinklle/status/1580921180478840832

In case you read Cyrillic, just look at the watermmark on the image in the background:

"Миротворець" (Myrotvorets)

An example Myrotvorets page:
myrotvorets.center/criminal/kobza…

@elonmusk @EvaFoxU I know you mean well, Elon. But do consider that diplomacy is not simply "find the median between the stances of A and B"

A: I want B's lungs ripped out.
B: No!
C: Okay, rip out ONE of B's lungs.

Also, that public stances != actual goals, that actual goals have to be assessed. @elonmusk @EvaFoxU War does not end when you find the median between "nominal stated goals", but when parties consider the cost to be too great to continue relative to the benefits.

Evaluating Ukraine here is fairly simple; it's a democracy and you can look at polling.

iri.org/news/iri-ukrai…

Today in Reykjavík, Ukrainian refugees organized an event to thank Icelanders for their support - starting with the unveiling of a mural. The president of Iceland (guy in the black suit) took part.

І я вперше заговорила українською з українцями :) Things then moved to Kolaportið . Right near the northern entrance they had a photography display of damage from the war. My favourite, for obvious reasons, being the one at the bottom.

The more I look at @elonmusk's poll the other day, the more one thing bothers me. And it's surprisingly not the astoundingly naive "hold UN supervised elections brutally military-occupied no-tolerance-for-dissent ethnically-cleansed territory".

It's this: 1) It's unabashed Russian propaganda. "Khrushchev's Mistake" is wording practically straight out of Putin's mouth.

edition.cnn.com/2014/03/21/opi…

2) It wouldn't be an excuse *anyway* for brutal militant expansionism and ethnic cleansing.

Slightly less honest Iceland travel ad images.
#AIArt

@brandall9481 B.F. Randall: <writes incredibly long thread about copper>

Also B.F. Randall: <starts thread off with a photo of the Mir diamond mine>

google.is/search?q=mir+d…

For anyone reading his thread, this should give you a good idea of how much he knows about the topic. 🙄 @brandall9481 Let's break down his claims.

"COPPER is an essential and limited resource for civilization, dating back to the Bronze age."

And copper today is vastly more affordable to the average person today than it was back then, despite it being mined at ~0,6% ores at ~2% ore volumes.

Study in extreme impasto.

#AiArt

@RPeacockCJ @cossackgundi @elonmusk First, apparently you're unaware that Russia hacked Viasat at the start of the war, and it was SpaceX's sudden intervention with Starlink that ruined their plans by keeping the comms up.

technologyreview.com/2022/05/10/105… @RPeacockCJ @cossackgundi @elonmusk Secondly, that's a lie. 3/4ths of the Starlink receivers were donated by SpaceX. Only 1/4th by USAID, after the fact. Exactly what would have made you happy - for SpaceX to refuse to sell to USAID, so that people like you don't badmouth them?

It's long past time that we had an unambiguous deterrent: NATO troops on the ground. Not involved in combat, far from the front, but equipped and instructed to defend themselves if attacked.

An example possibility.

https://twitter.com/WarInUkraineYet/status/1574068051858931712

In the north, a ~50km buffer in most locations would generally stay out of Belarussian artillery range (except long-range rocket artillery, such as Smerch) and include the Rivne nuclear power plant and all major roads to Poland. An exception would be Chernobyl. Ukrainian forces..

People are citing this to prove that fleeing Russians are evil. I find this sad. He's repeating the state's fake news propaganda that Ukraine invaded THEM on behalf of America. Not a very smart or worldly person - exactly the sort of person state propaganda is aimed at.

https://twitter.com/AndrewPerpetua/status/1573756507623137280

And the thing is, this works. Were Germans in the 1930s evil? No, they were *lied to* to manipulate them. Most believed the state line that Poland *invaded them*. That Poland was committing genocide against Germans and crossed their borders.

Deconstructing hypercubic ferrofluidis

#AIArt Deconstructing hypercubic ferrofluidic whirlpools

-= Examining The Stereotypes About AI Artists =-

Short 🧵, as I noticed many people seem to have some strong stereotypes about the #aiartcommunity , and was curious how true the are. To that effect, I conducted polls on the #StableDiffusion Reddit asking three questions.

#AIArt Stereotype #1: "AI artists are mostly men!"

This appears to be true... at least with the caveat that Reddit itself also skews male (2:1). This one concerns me, as art today is quite well gender-balanced, and I don't want to see a skew if AI takes over. Hopefully this will shift.

@treygahigh @TaraBull808 @elonmusk @theliamnissan @RBReich Define "wealthy".

Wealthier than the average South African? Sure. Super-wealthy. No. Robert-Reich-level wealthy? No. On the decline (eventually to bankruptcy) by the time Elon moved out as a teen, which he did without his father's support and with $2k to his name. @treygahigh @TaraBull808 @elonmusk @theliamnissan @RBReich The thing is, there would be a good conversation to have here about the nature of privilege. Did Elon have privileges that, say, the average black South African living in a township didn't? *Absolutely*. And going to private school (despite him being veritably tortured there)...

As Trevor Milton's fraud trial continues, here's to remembering that time during Nikola's IPO where Trevor entrapped an old friend, leading to him committing suicide, to shut him up about Trevor's past sexual misbehavior.

RIP, Jonny Robb.

https://twitter.com/davidbateman/status/1307964510838255618

More:

https://twitter.com/davidbateman/status/1307212066017521667

Since Elon went and stirred up a hornet's nest by sharing a tweet that (falsely) implied that clinics give hormones to 4-year-olds, I think it's time for a biology thread on what *sex* (let alone gender) actually *is*. Beginning from fetal development.

https://twitter.com/marc_benton/status/1571884298839683073

It should go without saying, though apparently needs to be reiterated, that humans are all the same species. Indeed, while it's often said that it's "chromosomes" that define sex, this is not entirely accurate either - the difference comes down to just a handful of genes.

Latent Worlds, Sector 1 of 3.

-= The Myth That Renewables Need Weeks Of Battery Storage =- 🧵

This one has been circling a lot recently, so I might as well nip it in the bud. It goes like this: "To save the planet with renewables, you need weeks of battery storage to keep the lights on. Impossible!" While based on a crumb of truth, it entirely misses the forest through the trees: while you can (in a variety of ways) reach 100% renewables, ***You Don't Need To***. It's a classic case of the Pareto Principle, where 80% of the result comes from 20% of the work.

Me: <Doing my taxes, needing a break>

Me: <Creates images trying to make doing taxes look epic> "A person doing their taxes. Revenue Service glitchcore. Tax return noir. Tax synthwave. Cinematic moody lighting. Light bloom. Darkness. Electronics glow. Artstation. 8K. HQ. Trending. Award-winning. Zeiss lens."

#StableDiffusion

@ExtinctionR @mortenlund89 An ICE vehicle burns its ***entire mass*** in fuel on average once every year for two decades.

The metals of both EVs and ICEs are mined once and then overwhelmingly recycled at end-of-life.

The lifecycle CO2 impacts of ICEs are *vastly* higher. @ExtinctionR @mortenlund89 Oh, and FYI, if your solution is "walk more", a walk powered by the average diet is comparable to that of an average ICE car:

nature.com/articles/s4159…

Cycling is about half the GHG footprint of walking, but still only the lowest-impact diet cyclist beats the *average* EV.

@Calltoart I'm not going to waste time of the rest of your litany of falsehoods, but as someone with a hort background, let me dive into that picture, what it shows, and what it doesn't.

This thread will require a number of tweets, so wait for "The End" before responding. @Calltoart First: meet RuBisCO: the most abundant protein on Earth.