mistercwood

He's a salesman. He considered that both of these things sound good to a broad field of people, and knew that (as demonstrated here) he could rely on people who believe his hype to defend him when others point out the painfully obvious conflict. Elon is a smart guy. But he is not 1/10th as smart as his biggest fans make him out to be.

For the exact same reason banks and other credit providers won't tell you precisely how you didn't meet their lending criteria, if your application is unsuccessful - it prevents people from learning what the actual criteria are and gaming the system. It's what makes Musk's statement that he wants to make the algorithm open-source AND also combat bots/spam absolutely and completely laughable, the two actions are in direct conflict with each other.

All of the actual studies that have been done on the topic have confirmed that Twitter amplifies conservative voices over progressive ones. The idea that conservatives are "censored" on the platform has always been a fiction.

I mean, probably? But at the end of the day, they aren't ascertaining *why* I'm looking at those things. They don't appear to be able to tell the difference between me looking through that stuff because I'm intrigued and agree, or looking at it to see just what kind of batshit insanity is being spruiked and absorbed by a small but increasingly noisy element of the populace.

This is what truly frustrates me about the almighty algorithm - it's supposedly the best thing the brightest minds at these tech companies can come up with, but it's just so dumb... There's no sophistication to it, it doesn't learn anything about why you clicked on something, it just goes "ok here is more of what you clicked". In the last 6 months or so, I clicked on the comments sections of certain FB posts that had been shared by some of my "wooier" friends about vaccine mandates etc, just to see what sort of things people were thinking. I never engaged on the posts themselves in any concrete way - didn't like comments or posts, didn't comment myself, I solely read the comments there on FB. I only had to do this a handful of times before half my suggested posts ran the gamut from sceptical to full-blown NWO conspiracies. The algorithm is extremely dumb, but also completely insidious.

This is the same verbatim argument being made in discussion forums everywhere, and highlights the black and white assumptions being made by those arguing against trans people in any sport - that a larger frame is always advantageous, and that the participant always went through a full biological male puberty. And those assumptions are wrong. A trans-woman who had puberty-blockers before transitioning, gets none of those testosterone-based growth advantages. That the examples making headlines are about people who've transitioned later, should not cause us to ignore the available variables here when making policy. If a trans-woman never had that growth advantage, on what basis now do we exclude her from participating in women's sports (if she chooses)? Second assumption - the outrage is almost always aimed at competitors in sports events where strength dominates. But what about where a large frame that no longer has its original supporting muscle mass is now a hinderance? In a gymnastics floor routine, a trans-woman who went through full puberty first is going to have a much, much harder time getting height off the floor - her frame is now a liability, not an advantage. This is a difficult problem, but not an unsolvable one. Anyone who thinks the answer is black and white though is being lazy.

The NYT article referenced in the Post article, itself links back to its own 2020 article about the laptop. If you'd read it, you'd see that they reported exactly what was known about it at the time. At no point do they deny its existence or likely link to Hunter. The only thing that was ever in doubt about the laptop is where it came from. The repair-shop story was horseshit from the start, anyone with an IQ above room temperature could see that.

It's not about the differing views, it's about someone who has spent literal years here refusing to engage in good faith on any topic of discussion. That's actually a rarity. There's plenty of people here who have wildly different world views to me, yourself included, but we can still talk things out when we want to - I wouldn't be going in knowing in advance it was 100% a waste of my time.

I suspect it was intended as a case of Schroedinger's Douchebag - the poster retroactively decides whether they were kidding or serious based on how you react. EDIT: Warning noted, but for the record this was never intended (veiled or not) as a PA. The phrase is a common one online and the behaviour was what I was calling out.

The cash-processing company I worked for in my 20's gave us branded polo-shirts as our uniform. I've always had a small frame, so the men's shirts were a flappy mess of wasted fabric on me. One of the women who ran a nearby machine gave me one of hers to try, fit me perfectly, traded out my regular ones and looked way more professional/neat instantly. Only thing to get used to was the button at the collar being the opposite to what I previously had.

I'm a mere 41, so don't know what all you Boomer's are going on about... :P

This has always been the crux of the criticism for JR - yes he brings on "both sides" as guests, but he does so completely uncritically. Bringing on an Astronaut and a Flat-Earther and giving them both a platform and equal airtime with no pushback or accountability lends credibility where it doesn't belong.

It's oft-quoted, but is consistently incorrect - suicide rates went down during lockdowns. Sadly the other points, in particular about DV incidents increasing, are generally accurate.

Couple of minor (but critical) corrections on these numbers: * The percentage in question is 56% * The percentage is taken from those poll respondents who stated they do not approve of Biden i.e. it's basically saying that of the people who don't like him, a little over half had nothing nice to say at all In fairness to you, CNN completely screwed up the reporting of their own poll, and other news outlets are just running with their own words.

It's wild that people will decry election "tampering" and then use the work of a felon convicted of campaign finance violations as evidence.

I'm not a scientician, but I do my best to at least do a cursory read of any study that the anti-X post as "proof" that they're in the right - including this one. Without fail, they never, ever say what the poster is claiming. Not ONCE in the last 2 years has the actual study backed up their claim. I was ready to put up a rebuttal but Bill already did a far better job than I could have.

Just a side note, as something I've picked up from several lawyers I follow on Twitter - yelling "Fire" in a theatre IS protected speech. The original ruling that it wasn't was overturned shortly thereafter.

I can't get on board with the no vax no treatment stance. I don't want our own single-payer system to start making calls on who gets in and who gets left to wait, other than regular triage, and if I want our (objectively better) system for those in the US, I should be maintaining that position. On the other hand, I am in full support of measures that restrict the movements of the unvaccinated and reduce their exposure to the general population, and hence exposure to the disease. If you won't take preventative measures, we will protect you from yourself. If you still get sick, you get treated just like everyone else. Hopefully you survive and maybe convince others of better choices.

I think this is the best one yet.

I'll regret this, but - we were right to mock them. CRT wasn't being taught in public schools. The propaganda campaign of conflating anything at all race related or even generally progressive with the buzzword of CRT has worked exactly as intended and completely muddied the waters, so you can label anything talking about race and its role in past society as CRT. Then you get to ban it as if it were the bogeyman. It's pathetic.

Clearly his performance wasn't worthy of applause.

Isn't that just the Holy Trinity in action?