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Maria Chong Profile picture
Maria Chong
@mariachong
Writer / Ethics, Design, Asia, Tech, Lit, Faith, Poetry #generosity SOLA GRATIA / Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible. Orwell
Jan 6, 2024 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
Bill Ackman’s hypocrisy on his wife’s plagiarism is exactly this adage.

“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” (Frank Wilhoit) What’s worse, minor plagiarism—or associating with Jeffrey Epstein, taking his dirty money for your lab, and forcing your students to create a custom thank you gift for a sleezebag AFTER his conviction for prostituting a minor?

bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/09/…



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Nov 12, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Unmarried men are having less sex, living with parents more, rejecting higher ed, getting fewer jobs, getting married less, dying at higher rates because their role models bank on self-victimization, grievance, misogynist narratives—profiting off the loss of agency & alienation. If you’re an ethical person, when young men or young women struggle to succeed in OUR society—that’s no time for gloating. What kind of society are we, what nation are we building—that leaves anyone behind? Alienation is a symptom of distress.
Nov 12, 2022 • 17 tweets • 5 min read
This is how people described Elizabeth Holmes. Your personal inner algorithm should put you in HIGH RED ALERT whenever you feel an instant soul bond with a charismatic leader. It’s a talent of these types. Are you a quadjillionaire VC fund writer…that sounds like a Scientologist apologist? You may have fallen for a con man.

“Crypto is money that can audit itself, no accountant or bookkeeper needed…” Image
Nov 11, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Slightly more than 24 hours between these two tweets. ImageImage One of Canada’s teacher pension plans had invested at least $95 million. (They’re a $242 fund, but still!)
Nov 11, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I follow 3858 accounts on Twitter and only 9 of them have signed up for Twitter Blue. (All 9 are notable persons who should have been verified under the old system.) Only .0023 of the accounts I follow are paying $8. Hmmm. I really enjoy Twitter (tip: follow mostly smart, good accounts). I've been thinking about paying for Twitter until this week. Not feeling now like showing support for the Dark Triad vibes, cutting the line in notifications, or getting associated with pandering/irresponsibility.
Nov 10, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Ordinary person can’t get a home loan if they screw up. But here’s a guy sharing fake news, behaving like a horndog 12-year old, causing a mass exodus of highly-skilled experts, ruining a brand—was entrusted with $13 million despite behaving publicly like an idiot FOR YEARS. Banks, can you assemble a team of psychologists and hostage negotiators? You’re gonna just let this libertarian trainwreck, technological lead zeppelin self-immolate daily? Taking your investments down into a crash site of erratic, paranoid hubris and hyper-narcissism?
Nov 10, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
I wonder how NASA feels about seeing Elon Musk behaving so erratically and recklessly? As a person who wanted to buy a Tesla from Day One, watching his public irresponsibility and carelessness has decreased my confidence in even his worthy projects. Sad. Character matters. We knew his ownership of Twitter would be bad. We knew he’d pander to Trumpists and rightwing extremists (he’d been communicating with them during the sale/they have his ear/he believes them). We knew he hates the press. He believes conspiracy theories. He shares slander.
Jul 11, 2022 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
A few tears in my eyes seeing the images from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. Every section of this high-resolution image is full of planets, stars, dust, plasma, dark matter…wondrous Spacetime.

stsci-opo.org/STScI-01G7JJAD… Here’s the first Hubble image (after repair) from 1994!

The collecting area of Webb is 4.5 m2 → about 6.25 times more collecting area + significantly larger field of view than Hubble camera (covers more than ~15x the area).

jwst.nasa.gov/content/about/…
May 14, 2022 • 16 tweets • 6 min read
America First, Great Replacement Theory, anti-immigrant disgust, etc. are corrosive beliefs that divide people—based on “outsiders are destroying our way of life.” These age-old scapegoating patterns are mere race anxiety for some, but justification for violence in others. Every Christian and conservative I know who falls into xenophobia becomes diminished. It’s unfortunate negative polarized rightwing media mainstreams these ugly, dangerous belief systems so that we (yet again) must face 1930s-style fear, bigotry, isolationism and hate here.
May 13, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Such a strange idea, that letting babies die in federal custody would magically fix corporate elite malfeasance & supply issues/decline due to societal stagnation.

Almost primitive, that the death of children of the people you hate would appease the gods, or change the weather. Goes back to the ludicrous magical thinking I spoke of earlier this week:
May 12, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
My neighbor (older, mechanic, military veteran) told me he admired how I write things. That he couldn’t picture things in his mind. I asked if he could think of and see a red ball. He replied no. He never could. (Smart man who can fix anything.) He asked me if I could. I told him I could visualize anything, like a fork, a house full of furniture room-by-room, or even whole worlds with people. Sometime I drift away into the past, or future. He looked shocked. I love learning how people’s minds are so different.
May 12, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Why representation matters.

New Interior Secretary Deb Haaland (member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe) commissioned a report on abuse, atrocities and deaths in residential boarding schools that housed Native American children. Horrific.

nytimes.com/2022/05/11/us/… Not the ancient past. Our generations.

“Enrollment reached its highest point in the 1970s. In 1973, 60,000 American Indian children are estimated to have been enrolled in an Indian boarding school.”

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_… Image
Apr 27, 2022 • 14 tweets • 6 min read
Similar to Book 11 (the first four chapters) of WAR AND PEACE—about the deliberately-set fires that greeted Napoleon when he took over Moscow in September of 1812. “In 1812, there had been approximately 4,000 stone structures and 8,000 wooden houses in Moscow. Of these, there remained after the fires only about 200 of the stone buildings and some 500 wooden houses…”
Apr 26, 2022 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
Had a lovely time in the pool swimming laps in the late afternoon and now I’m having Japanese curry I cooked on Sunday. One thing both Christianity and history have taught me is how to cultivate hope, peace and perspective no matter the circumstances. I enjoyed reading the obscure Dickens novel BARNABY RUDGE a few years ago. Significant things like the Popery Act of 1698, Papists Act of 1778, Gordon Riots of 1780, and even the book itself (Dickens’ first “serious” work of literature) have almost entirely faded from memory.
Apr 25, 2022 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
This is the quality of mind of the man who wants to take over this place. Infantile mockery, baseless slander, irresponsibility. It’s outrageous Twitter is even considering an offer from someone who has misused the platform and lacks basic human decency.
Apr 24, 2022 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
Productive weekend visiting garden nursery with a friend, having coffee/charcuterie on patio, cooking three meals for next week, planting kale/cilantro/sunflowers, weeding, Zoom meeting re: upcoming museum exhibit, church, Costco run, watching Chinese historical drama. Also had breakfast with friend on waterfront, checked out two local parks for hikes, saw doctor re: knee MRI (slight meniscus tear?), did copious amounts of laundry, and watered all the orchids/indoor plants and most of the outdoor plants.
Apr 24, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
“…their share is growing: Real estate investors bought a record 18.4 percent of the homes that were sold in the United States in the fourth quarter of 2021, up from 12.6 percent a year earlier…” Much more in certain metro areas (driving up housing unaffordability):

“In Charlotte and Atlanta, investors purchased more than 30 percent of the homes sold in the fourth quarter of 2021…In Jacksonville, Fla., Las Vegas, and Phoenix, they bought just under 30 percent.”
Apr 23, 2022 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
It’s fascinating to watch one smart-but-highly-neurotic person call out another smart-but-neurotic person for being neurotic—the very trait that allows most good thinkers to notice things and care. When you read people’s biographies with compassion, it’s easy to see many who overuse social media have insecurities, self-loathing, are overly-sensitive, desire to be more successful. → Normal traits for intellectuals and humans.
Apr 23, 2022 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Fascinating thread on AI morphing faces to elicit judgments + quite shocking to see clear bias against Asians (which the researchers recognize, as it comes from training data). How do you make an Asian woman more “trustworthy”?

You make her white.

(This is W I L D.)
Apr 15, 2022 • 19 tweets • 6 min read
I think people have already forgotten that Twitter started as an absolutist free speech platform with few rules—and that the company resisted implementing moderation even for bigotry and harassment FOR YEARS.

nytimes.com/2016/06/10/ins… “Throughout the years, Twitter has billed itself as an anti-censorship platform, at one point even calling itself the ‘free speech wing of the free speech party.’”

Good rundown of evolution of moderation on Twitter:

vice.com/en/article/z43…
Dec 30, 2021 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
COVID is not the flu. Its mechanisms are not like the flu.

Recently-approved Fluvoxomine helps ameliorate the platelet activation side effects, and reduces the need for hospitalization. It’s well-studied, has been trialed in COVID patients, and shows significant efficacy. Breathing issues and pneumonia in severe COVID seems to be related to how platelet activation and thrombosis damage to pulmonary endothelial cells.

This is not seen in non-COVID ARDS (acute respiratory distress syndrome).