Best of Twitter - Week of August 16, 2021 [1/2]
![Twitter avatar for @benskuhn](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/benskuhn.jpg)
Top things I did in college, ranked by ex-post usefulness:
1. Revive an effective altruism student group
2. Start a blog
3. Intern at GiveWell
4. Build a course catalog website
5. Contra dance a lot
6. Fail abjectly at starting a startup
...
~50. Classes
![Twitter avatar for @woj_zaremba](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/woj_zaremba.jpg)
We are releasing an API to turn English into code.
Make a computer game from scratch in a few minutes.
youtube.com/watch?v=SGUCcj…
btw: some people suspect that I am an AI in this video.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_600,h_314,c_fill,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F87ec25df-f43d-4a1c-9763-4d433f9500f2_1280x720.jpeg)
![Twitter avatar for @XiXiDu](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/XiXiDu.jpg)
Some links to research on how to hack air-gapped systems and more.
A superhuman AI will break your security, no matter what
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_600,h_314,c_fill,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdd49fc93-ecb4-4d59-8fa5-6cb4670db641_90x90.jpeg)
![Twitter avatar for @BasilHalperin](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/BasilHalperin.jpg)
Related to this @tylercowen column, a graph that (frankly) shocked me when I first saw it:
Teen suicide rates drop by 15-20% in summer months when school is out – whereas for older groups, suicides rise then
(A drop in December during winter break, too)
basilhalperin.com/essays/school-…
![Image](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_600,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.substack.com%2Fmedia%2FE8h2-BrXEAkHJ9j.jpg)
![Twitter avatar for @tylercowen](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_40/tylercowen.jpg)
tylercowen @tylercowen
^ thread
![Twitter avatar for @dragoncowman1](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/dragoncowman1.jpg)
How good is the West’s model of Chinese tech/politics?
I was intrigued by this thread that circulated through tech Twitter a few months back.
It suggested that China’s unicorn birth rate had fallen to 3 in 2021, relative to 132 YTD in the US.
![Twitter avatar for @ruima](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_40/ruima.jpg)
Rui Ma 马睿 @ruima
![Twitter avatar for @dragoncowman1](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/dragoncowman1.jpg)
This graphic was boosted by many POIs in the western tech sphere (Balaji, P Collison, etc-Rui Ma herself is a China tech reporter/investor which gave cred)
![Twitter avatar for @balajis](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_40/balajis.jpg)
Balaji Srinivasan @balajis
![Twitter avatar for @dragoncowman1](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/dragoncowman1.jpg)
But within a few days it was shown by Chinese sources that the actual Chinese YTD number was ~38!
![Twitter avatar for @ruima](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_40/ruima.jpg)
Rui Ma 马睿 @ruima
^ thread; (I also totally believed the first number of just 3 unicorns…..)
![Twitter avatar for @tiredgenerally](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/tiredgenerally.jpg)
Do you ever walk into a Whole Foods and just marvel at the amount of insane pseudoscience rich people buy into?
![Twitter avatar for @IanColdwater](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/IanColdwater.jpg)
@tiredgenerally When I worked at Whole Foods as a teen our big seller was shark cartilage supplements, fueled by a book called "Sharks Don't Get Cancer" that posited that sharks don't get cancer so if you take shark cartilage supplements you won't get cancer either. That's it. That's the science
unrelated tweet:
![Twitter avatar for @Duderichy](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/Duderichy.jpg)
The fact that Tim Ferriss stopped taking all supplements besides magnesium should tell you everything you need to know.
![Twitter avatar for @NewYorker](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/NewYorker.jpg)
The F.D.A. approved the first Lyme vaccine in 1998. Then, in a rare occurrence in modern medicine, it disappeared.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_600,h_314,c_fill,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F57580ce0-64d2-4e0c-8990-45ad42e4feb8_1280x720.jpeg)
Quarantined section
![Twitter avatar for @JansenKornelius](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/JansenKornelius.jpg)
Peter Daszak's letter that started this whole "lab leak is a conspiracy" campaign is very instructive on how elite consensus is formed.
There is no ominous conspiracy in dimly lit rooms. Just a sleazy sociopath smooth talking his gullible colleagues into saving his ass.
![Image](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_600,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.substack.com%2Fmedia%2FE8holMZXsAM1fW9.png)
![Twitter avatar for @stephenkinsella](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/stephenkinsella.jpg)
Check the time stamp. Have a read. Recall what everyone was saying at the time.
![Twitter avatar for @balajis](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_40/balajis.jpg)
Balaji Srinivasan @balajis
^ Balaji’s tweet is from January 30, 2020