32 private links
Andrea Stroppa, a confidant of Musk who has connected him with far-right Italian PM Giorgia Meloni, was reported by Italian media to have posted the clip of Musk with the caption: "Roman Empire is back starting from Roman salute".
The Roman salute was widely used in Italy by Benito Mussolini's Fascist Party, before later being adopted by Adolf Hitler in Germany.
Stroppa later deleted his post, Italian media said. He later posted that "that gesture, which some mistook for a Nazi salute, is simply Elon, who has autism, expressing his feelings by saying, 'I want to give my heart to you'".
On Jan. 7th, Greenblatt appeared before Knesset's Committee for Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs to encourage further censorship initiatives that the Israeli government could take on.
The Apartheid Defense League is an anti-Palestinian hate group whose primary focus is right-wing, pro-Israel advocacy.
Greenblatt pushed for the State of Israel to consider the fight against antisemitism online and around the world to be another front (alongside Gaza, Lebanon, West Bank, Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Iran) that the country must contend with.
“Capturing TikTok might seem less meaningful than holding on to Mount Hermon. Libelous tweets certainly might seem less deadly than missiles from Yemen. But this is urgent because the next war will be decided based on how Israel and its allies perform online as much as offline. Make no mistake, it’s real,” he said.
eJP - In the Knesset, ADL chief admits failure to extinguish the post-Oct. 7 ‘inferno of antisemitism,’ calls for new strategies
https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/in-the-knesset-adl-chief-admits-group-has-failed-to-combat-antisemitism-calls-for-new-strategies/
Of course, Greenblatt had no advice on encouraging censorship on Facebook or X because both of those institutions are already anti-Palestinian.
After Elon Musk boosted antisemitic conspiracies on X and denounced the ADL, he had to launder his reputation with corporate America. So, he suddenly became a pro-Israel fanatic and began regurgitating hasbara BS.
Relatively-recently, Wikipedia deems the ADL to be an unreliable source on the Israel/Palestine issue.
Democracy Now! - Wikipedia Declares ADL an “Unreliable” Source on the Israel-Palestine Conflict
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/6/21/headlines/wikipedia_declares_adl_an_unreliable_source_on_the_israel_palestine_conflict
There have been edit wars going on re: this issue for as long as Wiki has existed. Pro-Israel editors have long been coordinating edits on Wiki to present a pro-Israel narrative.
Some pro-Palestine editors might have begun doing the same thing - but recently, many such editors were busted for primarily ETIQUETTE-related reasons. Like being 'impolite' or something to a pro-Israel editor.
For this, the ADL recently celebrated:
https://x.com/ADL/status/1880363032179798081
The ADL and other pro-Israel groups are likely putting pressure on Wiki to take these actions. No such pressure has been applied to the many sock-puppet pro-Israel accounts that regularly edit-war on Wiki over this issue.
RE: META
META has long been censoring & penalizing pro-Palestine content and that which is critical of Israel. In fact, META discriminates against Palestinians and their supporters so badly that an internal audit by the company put out a report stating it hurts Palestinian human rights.
Based on the data reviewed, examination of individual cases and related materials, and external stakeholder engagement, Meta’s actions⁸ in May 2021 appear to have had an adverse human rights impact (as defined in footnote 3) on the rights of Palestinian users to freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, political participation, and non-discrimination, and therefore on the ability of Palestinians to share information and insights about their experiences as they occurred. This was reflected in conversations with affected stakeholders, many of whom shared with BSR their view that Meta appears to be another powerful entity repressing their voice that they are helpless to change.
The Independent - Facebook and Instagram ‘violated Palestinian users’ rights by taking down posts, according to its own report
https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/meta-facebook-instagram-palestinian-rights-b2173756.html
HRW even issued a follow-up report about META, concluding:
Human Rights Watch found that the censorship of content related to Palestine on Instagram and Facebook is systemic and global. Meta’s inconsistent enforcement of its own policies led to the erroneous removal of content about Palestine. While this appears to be the biggest wave of suppression of content about Palestine to date, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has a well-documented record of overbroad crackdowns on content related to Palestine. For years, Meta has apologized for such overreach and promised to address it. In this context, Human Rights Watch found Meta’s behavior fails to meet its human rights due diligence responsibilities. Despite the censorship documented in this report, Meta allows a significant amount of pro-Palestinian expression and denunciations of Israeli government policies. This does not, however, excuse its undue restrictions on peaceful content in support of Palestine and Palestinians, which is contrary to the universal rights to freedom of expression and access to information.
Human Rights Watch - Meta’s Broken Promises
https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/systemic-censorship-palestine-content-instagram-and
The Guardian - Meta censors pro-Palestinian views on a global scale, report claims
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/dec/21/meta-facebook-instagram-pro-palestine-censorship-human-rights-watch-report
META implemented a new policy called 'community engagement expectations' (CEE) - which bans discussions about politics. CEE violations can hurt performance reviews and sometimes lead to termination of employment.
[...] Under the CEE, which launched in 2022, discussions of armed conflict, war, or other political matters are banned inside the company; violations can hurt performance reviews and, in some cases, lead to termination.
One former Meta employee believes the CEE was largely a reaction to the Black Lives Matter protests and the 2020 US presidential election. “Before that, you could have a profile photo that says ‘Make America Great Again,’” the source says. But the turmoil such political expressions caused within the company led Meta to crack down.
“Whether it is an opinion or a fact shared, at our size—and again, with the diversity of our population—an opposing or seemingly neutral comment could trigger feelings of contention, sadness, anger, distraction and even grief,” Williams, the diversity chief, wrote in her message last month. Williams reminded workers that they are welcome to speak up externally, including on Meta apps such as Instagram or Threads.
WIRED - How Watermelon Cupcakes Kicked Off an Internal Storm at Meta
https://www.wired.com/story/meta-palestine-employees-watermelon-cupcakes-censorship/
META is also implicated in a WhatsApp 'leak' that has allowed the IDF to further target Palestinians.
Against the backdrop of the ongoing war on Gaza, the threat warning raised a disturbing possibility among some employees of Meta. WhatsApp personnel have speculated Israel might be exploiting this vulnerability as part of its program to monitor Palestinians at a time when digital surveillance is helping decide who to kill across the Gaza Strip, four employees told The Intercept.
The Intercept
https://theintercept.com/2024/05/22/whatsapp-security-vulnerability-meta-israel-palestine/
This is all by design, since prominent positions in META are even held by Likud appointees like former Netanyahu advisor, Jordana Cutler, or former (and fired) Israeli government officials like Emi Palmor.
When META employees petitioned company execs about the findings of the BSR report, they were instead censored under the purview of CEE.
Human Rights Watch’s allegations validated concerns of the Palestinian Working Group, a years-old intranet forum at Meta, consisting of more than 200 staff, for discussing issues faced by Palestinian users, according to one of the sources. The group in December organized an internal letter to top executives with a list of demands aimed at making services such as Facebook and Instagram safe and fair for Palestinian supporters.
The letter drew over 450 signatures in a few hours before workers say the internal community relations team took down the petition and deleted emails soliciting support from workers’ inboxes. Akhter, one of the organizers, had her “system access” disabled for three months, she would later say on Instagram. She said the petition had been flagged for violating Meta’s community engagement expectations, or CEE.
WIRED - How Watermelon Cupcakes Kicked Off an Internal Storm at Meta
https://www.wired.com/story/meta-palestine-employees-watermelon-cupcakes-censorship/
RE: X/Twitter limiting the reach of pro-Palestine content
In the following video (not sure of the time-stamp), Elon Musk assures right-wing supporters of Israel that he will 'limit the reach' of pro-Palestine content.
The Forward
https://forward.com/culture/562411/elon-musk-ben-shapiro-twitter-antisemitism-jewish/
We find that the economic damages resulting from climate change until 2049 are those to which the world economy is already committed and that these greatly outweigh the costs required to mitigate emissions in line with the 2 °C target of the Paris Climate Agreement (Fig. 1). This assessment is complementary to formal analyses of the net costs and benefits associated with moving from one emission path to another, which typically find that net benefits of mitigation only emerge in the second half of the century. Our simple comparison of the magnitude of damages and mitigation costs makes clear that this is primarily because damages are indistinguishable across emissions scenarios—that is, committed—until mid-century (Fig. 1) and that they are actually already much larger than mitigation costs. For simplicity, and owing to the availability of data, we compare damages to mitigation costs at the global level. Regional estimates of mitigation costs may shed further light on the national incentives for mitigation to which our results already hint, of relevance for international climate policy. Although these damages are committed from a mitigation perspective, adaptation may provide an opportunity to reduce them. Moreover, the strong divergence of damages after mid-century reemphasizes the clear benefits of mitigation from a purely economic perspective, as highlighted in previous studies.
The correlation analysis showed a significant negative relationship between MPSVATQ and theta power index reflecting the executive control in the prefrontal region (r = −0.395, p = 0.007), this result was not observed by using theta power index of the resting-state EEG data. Furthermore, a significant negative correlation was identified between MPSVATQ and SCS outcomes (r = −0.320, p = 0.026). These results suggest that an increased tendency toward mobile phone short video addiction could negatively impact self-control and diminish executive control within the realm of attentional functions. This study sheds light on the adverse consequences stemming from short video consumption and underscores the importance of developing interventions to mitigate short video addiction.
“The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape,’ ” Kaplan wrote.
Facebook built two versions of a fix for clickbait this year, and decided to trust algorithmic machine learning detection instead of only user behavior, a
Tom Gambrel, the superintendent of Bell County, Kentucky, schools, joined most of his neighbors and cast his vote for Trump with his students in mind, but he told CNN that he hopes the president-elect doesn't carry through with his plan to cut federal education funding.
“I don’t think that anyone in our county wants to cut our school funding," Gambrel said, "and I don’t think that anyone voted for that."
Gambrel said the proposed cuts would be “catastrophic," forcing teacher layoffs, packing more students into classrooms and getting less attention for vulnerable students.
A CNN analysis found that all 15 of the states that rely most heavily on federal support for public schools in 2022 backed Trump in November, while all but two of the 15 that receive the fewest federal dollars as a percentage of their overall revenue supported Kamala Harris.
“This is one of these cases where (Republican) policies are stabbing their base right in the heart and will directly impact their kids,” said Will Ragland, vice president of the Center for American Progress.
yeah, a blue checkmark is whatever, but what message does that send?
"Criticize me and I'll punish you and there's nothing you can do about it"
It's way scarier that this is happening publicly because it means Elon doesn't give a shit about being seen as abusing his power or being petty, or unprofessional or any of that. If you step out of line, he'll punish you
Leaking DMs is also wild. What if Elon can read all of Asmon's DMs? He OWNS Twitter. There's 100% a backdoor for government requests to access anyone's DMs. He has the power to leak ANY of your DMs anonymously.
How in the fuck is that not FUCKING SCARY and LITERALLY censorship through intimidation?
The researchers who discovered the identity of Adrian Dittmann, the user many believed was Elon Musk, are being asked to delete more posts.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may whine all he likes about how U.S. President-elect Donald Trump made him do it. He is already selling the "I had no choice, we managed to postpone this for months" message to his ultranationalist, messianic, warmongering ruling coalition partners. But the truth is very clear: he has agreed to a deal he could and should have signed many months ago.
The deal that may – and still may not – be agreed and signed on Tuesday or Wednesday was on the table last May, again in July and practically ever since. But Mr. Netanyahu, in the name of "an existential war" that will produce a "total victory," waited for the U.S. election and then for the presidential inauguration before agreeing to a deal.
Explaining why he opposes the deal, far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir specifically recalled how he previously prevented a deal by threatening Netanyahu, validating the claim that the prime minister's entire calculus was politically motivated. He never intended to end the war even when since-dismissed Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and the Israel Defense Forces stressed that all military goals had been achieved. The "strategic importance" of the Philadelphi corridor along the Gaza-Sinai border, meanwhile, was a bogus and cynical argument he had concocted.
It’s not as bad as you think—it’s worse.
Mathematicians are working to fully explain unusual behaviors uncovered using artificial intelligence.
A textbook example of shifting the standards of evidence to suit its authors’ needs.
Abstract page for arXiv paper 2310.06770v2: SWE-bench: Can Language Models Resolve Real-World GitHub Issues?
A post for developers about the new Claude 3.5 Sonnet and the SWE-bench eval
We provide the first nationally representative long-run series (1870–2020) of incarceration rates for immigrants and the US-born. As a group, immigrants have had lower incarceration rates than the US-born for 150 years. Moreover, relative to the US-born, immigrants' incarceration rates have declined since 1960: immigrants today are 60 percent less likely to be incarcerated (30 percent relative to US-born Whites). This relative decline occurred among immigrants from all regions and cannot be explained by changes in observable characteristics or immigration policy. Instead, the decline is part of a broader divergence of outcomes between less-educated immigrants and their US-born counterparts.
The findings revealed a beauty premium in face-to-face instruction. For non-quantitative courses (like business and economics), attractive students had higher grades during in-person teaching. However, this trend did not appear in quantitative subjects (such as math or physics), which are generally graded based on exams rather than assignments that involve more direct interaction.
The results also showed that the switch to online learning in 2024 eliminated the beauty advantage — but only for female students. For non-quantitative courses, attractive female students experienced a drop in grades with remote learning, while attractive male students continued to see the benefits of their appearance.