>one side has a leader calling out his people to be vigilant and prepared
What's wrong with being vigilant? I remember more than four years of accusations that Russia somehow hacked the last election. Vigilance would be prudent.
>in fact two men father and son have been arrested yesterday in Philadelphia armed of ar-15 with hundreds of rounds
Read up on the story. They weren't even carrying the rifle. The fake ballots were just a publicity stunt to mock the story of Biden's receiving miraculous overnight ballots.
>thanking the volunteers of all sides and talking about reuniting American people
Politicians all over the world say that after they won the election through various means. It's just a platitude and doesn't mean anything.
>2. No one would have made this sequence in the laboratory because it would not have been the one to make.
That's circular logic. Unless directly involved in Chinese Bio Weapons research he can't possibly know which variants were tried for 'gain of function'.
>When both sides are engaging civically yes. If one side is acting partisanly or in bad faith, using demagoguery & deceit, civics is to call out the dis-ingenuousness & descent from reason.
One side is threatening violence in case Trump isn't voted out. I wouldn't call that "civically".
I don't have much to add but I'm upvoting in order to lend your question more visibility.
I'm not sure if it can be measured directly somehow, that is why I'm often skeptical of published findings in social sciences. I feel like there often too many factors (especially unconscious) at play. For example I read a couple of the seminal books on Charisma and Social Influence and too often wondered how much of the influential effect must actually be attributed to the (conventional) physical attractivity and the "Halo" effect[1].
>So my question would be, how do you assess that your 'problem-solving' abilities have improved over time?
'Number of solved problems' would be some kind of benchmark.
The 'harder' the problem is, which you solved, the 'greater' the skill must be.
I have an acquintance that does research on "Gamifying" approaches to mental health issues (depression, ADHD, etc.).
To me what you're looking for really sounds like some kind of skill-tree. The kind you find in a lot of RPG-based games[2].
>Or was this just people copying and pasting the same message (if so why that rather than retweet)? There were so many every few seconds I assumed it was a script just running through accounts. But --- if it wasn't, what were people hoping to gain? Views on their own profile?
Cashing in on the public attention. Social media is filled with people who would debase themselves for a little bit of attention or likes. The hack caused a lot of uproar, what better way than pretending you're were high-profile enough to be hacked too?
>Agreed. This was most likely a "shot across the bow" by a state actor.
The hack would have been a powerful weapon if used in a more strategic way. A "shot across the bow" as a tactic is useless when the weapon can only be used a single time and never again. The code will be patched now.
>Also, the crystal clear implication that the damage done could have been far worse, would seem to indicate someone was sending a message.
That's hindsight knowledge. To me it looks more like an un-sophisticated actor that stumbled over a critical vulnerability and had to use it haphazardly before it somehow becomes obsolete with code update.
>From whom and to whom can only be the subject of speculation, but again, whoever did this must have known that the it would be interpreted as an attack from China to the USA. So either they didn't care because making that obvious was the whole point (ergo, attacker probably China), or the misdirection was the whole point (ergo, attacker probably a power that would stand to benefit from increased tension between USA and China).
Actually I don't see much speculation that China is behind the hack other than from the people who are quick to blame China anyway. The sloppy execution actually speaks against a nation-state actor. The loss of trust in Twitter only plays into Trump's hand regarding his personal feud with the platform.
>This. It almost seems like a proof of concept for someone selling services to a bigger player, using the Bitcoin angle as a smokescreen.
This is rather unlikely. There is nothing left to sell. The vulnerabilty was "burned" in the showcase. The code will now be patched 6 ways till sunday and they will probably uncover even more vulns in the code audit. Twitter got caught with their pants down and they will make sure it doesn't happen againg the same way.
If you want to make a display PoC before the sale, let the buyer arbitrarily choose a Twitter account and then do your thing. Taking over dozens of high-profile Twitter accounts the way it happened is just drawing unnecessary attention. Everyone will now trust Twitter less and no one know what kind of new security measure will come of this.
>I'm curious 1) in what way you think the quote isn't representative of the president's tweet? 2) how you would distill the tweet into one sentence if you were asked to summarize it for an article?
Regarding
1)
The first half of Trump's message was omitted, dropping the context that (if you refer to congresswomen Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar) Mexico and Somalia are objectively societies permeated by crime and corruption.
Solely the emotionally charged bits were quoted by the author, therefore distorting the message.
2)
USAtoday did a relatively unemotional job of this:
"President Donald Trump’s opponents accused him of xenophobia and racism Sunday after he posted tweets calling on an unspecified group of Democratic congresswomen to “go back and help fix” the countries he said they “originally came” from before trying to make legislative changes in the USA."[1]
For a while now The Economist has not been suspect of being an objective source of reporting when it comes to political subjects and issues. Just like The Guardian or the BBC, they live on the remains of a good reputation from former days.
In case you're not a troll and your vision was just clouded by mindless Trump and GOP hate:
Have you ever heard the name Michael 'Mike' Bloomberg[1] before? He was a registered Democrat candidate running against(!) Trump in the presidential race.
The same Mike Bloomberg is also the founder and owner (well, majority shareholder) of Bloomberg L.P.[2].
Why would a Democrat presidential candidate use his company's influence support the strategy of his outspoken opponent?
>His pen name and his real name are already strongly linked in search engine space.
It's not.
I've been following the development of the drama for a while. And even though I know a thing or two about OSINT, I still don't know Scott Alexander's real full name.
>what was likely to be an enthusiastic article has been absolutely pathological
The NY Times was willing to use pseudonyms for the subjects of articles in the past. I didn't see Banksy exposed for instance.
So if the article was in fact sympathetic why use the real name, when it has no relevancy to the subject?
Unless, the article was actually not sympathetic, but meant as a zesty piece to "expose" Scott Alexander as a reactionary/eugenist/sexist in the current hot climate of "cancel-culture".
Which surely would generate lots of clicks for the NY Times, but would also destroy the subject of their story at the hands of SJW/twitter mob, then allowing for more stories about the drama and generate more clicks.
Exposing SA's real name is a win only for the NY Times.
Just went to the first entry in section "poltics&news" and immediately closed the site. This is the same cancer as reddit only with more blinking animated gifs. "unHINGEDpolitics.com" would be a better fitting name IMO.