Best of Twitter - Week of April 18, 2022
The top-line result of this study of microlending is that it helps women start businesses and earn income. But unfortunately, the businesses they are starting are often multilevel marketing businesses, where you mostly make money by signing up other people. (1/7)
MDRC @MDRC_News
^ thread
TikTok is eating passive screen time
every single streaming company is going to have to compete against this.
It has network effects, where they don’t even have networks, content is endless and cheap and ever expanding, it’s free, and it requires less commitment to consume
Autocracies overstate yearly GDP growth by as much as 35% when checked with more objective nighttime lights activity.
Democracies have a much better economic track record once GDP figures are adjusted for manipulation.
Luis R. Martinez @LuisRMartinezA
"support for the French Gaullists and the socialists collapsed from 54% in the late Eighties to just 6% today. Over the last half century, the French socialists — once the pre-eminent Left-wing party in Europe — have fallen from over 40% to just 1.7%."
unherd.com/2022/04/the-fu…
I spent most of this past weekend experimenting with DALL·E 2, OpenAI’s new AI system that can create realistic images from a written description.
I curated a book of 1000 robot paintings. You can view the entire thing online at archive.org/details/111110… #dalle
New report in @Nature from @ATJCagan and coworkers measures an inverse correlation between somatic mutation rate and lifespan among 15 mammalian species. Inspires brainstorming about correcting cellular mutations as a potential way to protect lifespan… 🤔
Alex Cagan @ATJCagan
a couple months ago the mechanism and now this. They're going to cure Multiple Sclerosis by summer and get the nobel in October just to own the mfs that were liek 'coRelATion iS noT cAusAtioN' at the Army paper showing a 40-fold odds ratio
New Scientist @newscientist
Introducing Frontier—a $925M advance market commitment (AMC) to accelerate carbon removal.
frontierclimate.com
It’s funded by Stripe, @Google, @Shopify, @Meta, @McKinsey, and the thousands of businesses using Stripe Climate.
More details. ⬇️
I grew up in New Zealand hearing horror stories about the over-medication of American kids. So it took me decades to realise I had ADHD, even though I had all the symptoms and struggled to work for more than a few minutes straight. Turns out Adderall is an absolute lifesaver.
I know Dall-E is impressive but I am absolutely floored by Google’s PaLM correctly identifying a deadpan joke as an “anti-joke” and explaining it (last example in photo)
storage.googleapis.com/pathways-langu…
Progress towards the singularity has never been more visible.